
Book * O "^ 
Gop)TightN" 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



i 



BEYOND 
THE ROAD TO ROME 



COMPILED AND EDITED BY 

GEORGINA PELL CURTIS 

Author of "Tramme lings'* and Editor of "Some Roads 

to Rome in America" and **The American 

Catholic Who's Who.'* 



"One thing our Faith demands — 
not to be condemned before it is known,** 

Tertullian. 



ST. LOUIS, MO., 1914 

Published by B. Herder 

17 South Broadway 

FREIBURG (BADEN) I 68, Great Russell Str. 

GERMANY I LONDON, W. C. 



.^^ 






NIHIL OB STAT 

Sti, Ludovici, die i6. Feb. 1914 

F. G. Holweck, 
Censor Librorum 



IMPRIMATUR 

Sti. Ludovici, die 19, Feb. 19 14 

^Joannes J, Glennon, 
Archiepiscopus 
Sti, Ludovici 



Copyright, 1914 

by 

Joseph Gummersbach 



All rights reserved 
Printed in U. S, A. 

APR -G 1914 



^ 



CI.A369570 









fN'' 



^ 



^" 



.-^ 



TO 

THE REV. F. BECHTEL, SJ. 

OF ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY 

IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF A 

FRIENDSHIP AND INTEREST THAT 

LED AND INSTRUCTED ME, UNTIL 

I HAPPILY REACHED THE PATH 

THAT LIES BEYOND THE 

ROAD TO ROME 



LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION. 

Cardinal's Residence, 

408 North Charles Street, 

Baltimore. 

January the 25th, 1913. 



Miss Georglna Pell Curtis, 

5000 North Ashland Ave., 
Chicago, 111. 
My dear Miss Curtis: — 

I beg to acknowledge receipt of your favor of 
the 23rd instant by which you inform me that you 
are to publish a companion volume to your '' Some 
Roads to Rome,'' entitled " Beyond the Road to 
Rome." I am very much pleased to hear this, and 
trust that it may receive the same cordial reception 
from the public as your first work. 

Wishing you success in your laudable enterprise, 
I am 

Most Faithfully Yours in Xto., 

J. Card. Gibbons, 
Archbishop of Baltimore. 



EDITOR'S PREFACE 

The idea of editing this book came to me five 
years ago, when I had in preparation my first book, 
** Some Roads to Rome in America." Not wish- 
ing to depend entirely on my own judgment, how- 
ever, I laid the plan of the proposed work before 
different members of the Hierarchy, and in reply 
received most kind and encouraging letters. Their 
Eminences, Cardinal Gibbons and Cardinal Farley; 
Archbishops Glennon, Ireland and Quigley ; Bishops 
Canevin, Northrop and Garrigan; Monsignor Sha- 
han of the Catholic University, and Father Hudson 
of the Ave Maria; one and all wrote to me and ex- 
pressed their cordial approval. 

Since then, six months have been devoted to the 
task, and in many ways it has proved a difficult 
one, chiefly because it was hard to make those who 
were asked to write understand the true object of 
the book. And that object is to convince non- 
Catholics that we converts remain where we are 
because we believe Divine Providence has led us; 
because we are satisfied; because we are sure our 
step was the right one ; in a word — because we have 
not been disillusioned, as numerous people, before 
we took the step, predicted we would be. 



EDITOR'S PREFACE 

Some of the stories herein deal exclusively with 
the Road beyond Rome; others touch on the Road 
to Rome, in order more clearly to explain what fol- 
lows, or to point later experiences; and wherever 
this has seemed necessary, or helpful, or interesting, 
it has been allowed. Some of the articles are per- 
sonal, others very impersonal; but each and all 
have their value as presenting some one objection 
entertained by non-Catholics against the Church ; or 
some difficulty encountered by the convert because 
it was so new, or so unlike what he had been accus- 
tomed to in former days. And all these many 
questions and perplexities, it seems to me, have 
been well met and answered in these pages. 

They should also make helpful reading to non- 
Catholics who have been drawn to the Church, but 
who are afraid to enter because of a thousand 
fears. 

It is my earnest hope (and I am sure the wish of 
all those who have helped to make it), that this 
book may convince all doubting souls that there is 
no terror or regret in store for them if they enter 
the gate and set their feet on the road beyond; for 
the Good Shepherd leads the way. Out in the 
wilderness He has sought and found us; He it is 
who brings us within the Fold — strange, trem- 
bling, often afraid — to find therein rest and warmth 
and light, and the peace that passeth all understand- 
ing; because it is His own Sheepfold, within which 
we are fed in green pastures and led by the waters 



EDITOR'S PREFACE 

of comfort, till we reach that road which leads on- 
ward to Eternal Life. And so, with this hope in its 
mission for good, we who have made the book, send 
it forth. 

Chicago, 111. 

September, 191 3. 



1 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Anthony, Wilfrid E., Esq I 

Bagley, Harry S., Esq 6 

Baker, Mrs. Laura M ii 

Beck, Hon. Nicholas D 14 

Beesley, Thomas, Esq. (Memoir) .... 16 
Benson, Very Rev. Monsignor Robert Hugh, 

M.A. 2y 

BoYCE, Malton, Esq 36 

Bradley, J. L., Esq., B.A. -55 

Bregy, Miss Katherine C 58 

Buchanan, Mrs. Anna E ^(y 

Cary, Miss Emma F 81 

Chambers, Rev. B. Stuart, D.D 83 

Chanler, Mrs. Winthrop 85 

Coleman, Caryl^ Esq 90 

CoLTON, Joseph E., Esq. .... ..o 95 

CoPELAND, Charles C. Esq 97 

Copus, Rev. John E., SJ loi 

CoRBiN, Mrs. Caroline E no 

Dawson, Henry S., Esq 112 

Edwards, Mrs. Laura G 129 

Ellis, Ellsworth S.^ M.D . . 133 

EwENs, John G. P., Esq., CM 138 

Fairbanks, Very Rev. Hiram F 154 

Fay, Rev. Sigourney W., A.B 172 

Ferris, Godfrey F., Esq 184 

*Trancis, Mary Monica" 191 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Francis, Rev. Paul James, S.A 202 

Goodrich, Frederick W., Esq 220 

Granger, Henry C., Esq 226 

Handly, Rev. John M. W., C. S. P 230 

Hawks, Rev. Edward F 240 

Hilburn, Mrs. M. E 252 

Kennedy, Francis S., Esq. Oxon 257 

KiDD, Frank A., Esq 262 

Lindner, Gustaf V., Esq 266 

Mackintosh, Hugh Eraser, Esq 272 

Markoe, William, Esq 276 

Mason, Redfern, Esq 2yy 

Maturin, Rev. B. W 282 

Merrill, W. Stetson, Esq., A.B 286 

MosBY, Thomas Speed, Esq 298 

McClellan, William H., Esq., S.J 300 

Papin, Mrs. Theophile 302 

Reeve, Felix Alexander, Esq 304 

Richey, James A. M., Esq 306 

Ruth, Miss Anna F 315 

Sandin, Carl L., Esq. 322 

Sargent, Rev. Henry R 333 

Seawell, Miss Molly Elliot 347 

Spensley, Very Rev. John, D.D. ; Ph.D. . • 348 
Starr, Rt. Rev. Monsignor, W. E., D.D. . . 353 
Stockley, Professor W. F. P., B.A. ;M.A. . . 357 
Stone, Very Rev. James Kent (Father Fi- 

delis, C.P.), 373 

Storer, Mrs. Bellamy 376 

Strong, Carlton, Esq. 382 

Tait, J. Selwin, Esq 395 

Thompson, Thomas Payne, Esq 402 

Ward, Mrs. George Cabot 406 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Wentworth, The Marquise Cecile de . , . 413 

Willis, Hon. John W., A.B. ; A.M 416 

Wilson, Robert Francis, Esq 422 

Editor, The 434 



BEYOND 
THE ROAD TO ROME 

WILFRID EDWARDS ANTHONY, 

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK. 
Architect; Writer. 

Having been brought up amidst Protestant sur- 
roundings, I was sent to Sunday school at Plymouth 
Church, where the late Henry Ward Beecher was the 
pastor. It so happened that I never came into in- 
timate contact with Catholics, nor even with Angli- 
cans. I never dreamt of an historical Christianity 
until one Lent I attended the noon-day services of 
Old Trinity in New York. Once on leaving the 
church I helped myself to a little tract which gave 
a very clear and concise outline of the Christian re- 
ligion from a strictly Catholic standpoint; and 
which, as my instructor subsequently pointed out, 
might easily be taught, with some few necessary ex- 
ceptions, from any Catholic pulpit. This tract 
quite took me off my feet and gave me, as it were, 
an entirely new insight and interest in matters re- 
ligious. By degrees I became less and less attached 
to pure Protestantism, frequenting various Angli- 

I 



2 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

can churches almost exclusively. At the end of 
about three years' time I decided to look for a suit- 
able Anglican clergyman to whom I might go for 
further instruction. As I have said, I had no 
friends to whom I felt disposed to talk on matters 
pertaining to religion. I had never been to a Cath- 
olic service except on two occasions when I was 
quite a child, nor did I ever give a serious thought 
to the Catholic Church, although my prejudices 
were gradually decreasing. 

At last I discovered the clergyman to whom I 
felt I could unburden my difficulties; so one day I 
gathered courage and set forth to call upon him. 
What was my surprise and disappointment on 
reaching his house to be informed that he had just 
gone to another charge in a city some hundreds of 
miles distant. For a time I was quite at a loss as 
to what course I should pursue. Divine Provi- 
dence, however, did not leave me long in doubt. 
At this period I was superintending the erection of 
a library situated on a prominent thoroughfare. 
One day, on looking across the way, I saw a clergy- 
man pass by whom I supposed to be the very one 
of whom I had been in quest. My thoughts were 
revolving quickly, and I suddenly determined to 
waive all ceremony, so I crossed the street and over- 
taking him accosted him then and there, believing 
him to have returned for a visit, and not darmg 
to lose this opportunity which Providence seemed 
to have placed in my path. I greeted him with an 



WILFRID EDWARDS ANTHONY 3 

apology and asked him if he were not Mr. ■ 

of St. Mary's. He smiled very cordially and in- 
formed me that he was not, though he had fre- 
quently been mistaken for the clergyman in ques- 
tion, but that he was a Catholic priest. I well re- 
member how I inwardly declared that whatever hap- 
pened I would never become a Catholic ! His genial 
manner caused me to thaw sufficiently to tell him 
some of my intentions. He gave me his card and 
invited me to call. This of course I took, at the 
same time firmly resolving never to avail myself of 
his invitation. But again my intentions were 
brought to naught, for by the end of that same 
week I went to see him. This was in December — 
the beginning of the end — for by the following 
Easter I was happily gathered into the Fold of 
Peter. 

From that time on — ' thirteen years — I have 
been supremely happy in the consciousness of pos- 
sessing that '^ faith once delivered to the Saints.'' 
Who but the convert can appreciate the wonderful 
peace and calm that follows in the wake of conver- 
sion to the One Catholic and Apostolic Church! 
Once the trying season of doubt and distress is 
passed, heart and mind are at rest, for the convert 
knows with a certainty not born of this world that 
so long as he remains faithful to the graces he has 
received, nothing can arise to disturb or overturn 
that placid calm upon which he has entered. The 
season immediately following conversion is full of 



4 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

wonderful experiences and of welcome refreshment 
after so many struggles and gropings for the light. 
The convert is in a position readily to understand 
how it is that so many of the Catholic-born are 
able, serenely to accept almost wholesale, their re- 
ligion on faith and without question. This the 
non-Catholic cannot grasp, ascribing the fact rather 
to ignorance or the influence of priestcraft, utterly 
failing to recognize the operations of the Holy 
Ghost. 

The Catholic's outlook on life must of necessity 
be one of optimism, for he knows he cannot be 
wrong and that eventually the truth must win 
against the forces of evil and stubborn unbelief. 

Another strange and noticeable feature of the 
Church as compared with the sects is her great and 
enduring toleration of her wayward children. She 
is not a cloak for smug respectability, but she is 
ever ready to welcome the return of the prodigal, 
no matter how often or how grievously he may 
have offended, and even though he be guilty of be- 
smirching her fair name. Moreover, the Catholic 
grows old gracefully, and with an humble certainty 
of future happiness. 

Our religion possesses a marvelous adaptability 
to the needs of human nature without regard to 
race, temperament or social position; it makes an 
appeal to the learned as well as to the ignorant, the 
artistic and the intellectual. There is no sphere 
which cannot be reasonably satisfied. Where out- 



WILFRID EDWARDS ANTHONY 5 

side the Catholic Church can we find that unique 
quality of the Pauline precept of being all things to 
all men; where else can we find such united di- 
versity? It does not exist elsewhere, for without 
the Church diversity spells division. This must 
of necessity be the case where a visible head and 
a guiding hand are non-existent. 

In conclusion — is it necessary for me to add 
that since my conversion I have never felt a single 
regret — save for my unworthiness in having been 
the recipient of so great a spiritual favor in mak- 
ing so vital a change — rather, every day it is 
borne in on me how great a privilege it is to be 
able to name oneself ^^ a Catholic " when the oppor- 
tunity arises. 



HARRY S. BAGLEY, 

BOSTON, MASS., AND WASHIXGTOX, D. C. 

Secretary, Catholic Converts' League of Washington, now 

employed in the Bureau of Chemistry, U. S. Dept. 

of Agriculture. 

Nearly five years ago I made the greatest de- 
cision of my life, and became a pilgrim on the 
Road to Rome. There was much hesitation on my 
part before I finally had courage to make the jour- 
ney. Doubts and fears impeded my progress for 
many years, for I fully realized the seriousness of 
the step; and it was a long, hard mental struggle 
before I was finally ready to set out on my pil- 
grimage. There were no doubts as to the validity 
of the claims of the Church, no fears as to what 
the step would mean to me from a moral standpoint ; 
but there were worldly considerations which made 
me doubtful, fearful and lacking in courage. Not 
until I had become reconciled to the thought of 
being isolated from home and friends, if needs be, 
and had come to the realization that I must take 
the step regardless of the earthly sacrifices that it 
might mean to me, did I receive the necessary grace 
which led me from darkness to light, from uncer- 
tainty to certainty, and from unrest to contentment. 

6 



I 



HARRY S. BAGLEY 7 

After having made all necessary preparations I 
faced the East ; I went to Rome. There I found 
greater joys in store for me than I had anticipated. 
The Hght was clearer and brighter than I had ex- 
pected to find it; the certainty and contentment 
which I have enjoyed through the possession of 
that knowledge has brought a fuller measure of 
satisfaction and happiness into my life than I had 
thought it could bring. 

It would be a strange order of things if one who 
had been blind from birth were suddenly to have 
his physical sight restored; and, after enjoying the 
beauties of the universe in which he lived, should 
deliberately walk away from the light, burying him- 
self in some cavernous pit, where no ray of sunshine 
ever illumined his vision, there to end his days in 
darkness and desolation. Not less strange would 
it be for a convert who has once seen the light of 
Faith ever to turn away from it. Rather will his 
cry be ''More light! More light!'' for with cer- 
tainty he knows that he must work out his salva- 
tion while his soul still has the light to assist him, 
for the " night cometh when no man can work." 
Nor can he gain this light by closing his eyes when- 
ever he sees an opportunity before him, nor by 
jealously hiding the luminous spark which he has 
received at baptism. Rather will he exert himself 
to gain further knowledge by prayer and good 
works, by carefully reading well-chosen literature, 
and by a systematic course of study taken up with 



8 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

even more zeal than when he looked at the claims 
of the Church from without the Fold. Then will 
he more fully comply with the Divine injunction: 
'' Let your light so shine before men that they may 
see your good works, and glorify your Father Who 
is in Heaven.'' 

It has been my experience that on every side — 
at home, at my place of employment, among ac- 
quaintances and friends — there is always an oppor- 
tunity to show the world that our holy religion is 
practical, that it fills the needs of our everyday 
lives, that it is truly a part of our existence, without 
which we would not feel the peace and contentment 
which tend to make the rough places smooth. A 
convert should not be content to rest from his la- 
bors after accomplishing his own conversion. 
Surely no offering could be more pleasing to Our 
Divine Lord than to assist in the saving of souls, 
and in this age of gross materialism and irreligion, 
nobody can say that there is not a broad field for 
the layman to work in. 

I have always been impressed with the fact that 
the Catholic Church is an institution which was 
founded for everybody. Taking the Church as an 
edifice, it is built for service. While it is true that 
much attention is paid to the ornate, the chief pur- 
pose for which it is constructed is to serve the 
throngs which are in daily or weekly attendance at 
Divine services. A non-Catholic once asked me 
why our Church floors are without carpets, and 



HARRY S. BAGLEY 9 

why we do not provide our pev/s with comfortable 
cushions, and, still further, why our kneeling- 
benches are so bare and hard. I had but to refer 
to the thousands of worshippers who use the 
Church to convince him that a Catholic Church 
could hardly be furnished like a drawing-room. 

Beyond the Road to Rome, I have found that 
" Universal Brotherhood '' which makes us all 
brothers in Christ, where rich and poor, white and 
black, saint and sinner, are united in one common 
cause, namely, the worship of Almighty God. Not 
only in public worship is this brotherhood in evi- 
dence. What lodge, fraternal order, or charitable 
association does as much to provide for the sick, 
the poor and the orphans as our Holy Mother, the 
Church? Down through the ages she has proved 
her right to the sacred name of " Mother '' to her 
children. Our joys are her joys, our sorrows her 
sorrows, and we, as her children, know that be- 
tween her and us there is a complete and perma- 
nent union. We may for a time live apart from 
her and forget that she is silently grieving and 
waiting for us to return, yet when trials and sor- 
rows come until they are too great for us to bear, 
it is Holy Mother Church that brings peace into 
our hearts and wipes away our tears. Instinctively 
we turn to her, always confident that out of the 
fullness of her heart, we will receive that of which we 
are in the greatest need. 

Beyond the Road to Rome I have found a spir- 



lO BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

itual mother, brothers and sisters, a consecrated 
home in which Christ is the Divine Host at every 
Eucharistic Banquet. I have found the one spot in 
all creation where the Voice speaks to me : " Be 
still, and know that I am God." 



LAURA M. BAKER, 

REDLANDS, HARPSDEN, HENLEY-ON-THAMES^ ENG- 
LAND. 

Hon. Secretary of the Correspondence Guild for Inquiries (in 
relation to Catholic doctrine) of London; a convert from 
Judaism; received into the Church, 1897. Daughter of 
Philip Salomons of Brighton ; niece of the late Sir David 
Salomons, first Jewish Lord Mayor of London, and first 
Jew to sit in the English Parliament. 

It IS now quite thirty years ago since I went for 
the first time into a CathoHc church, simply for the 
music, and singing, of which I am very fond. After 
that I went at long intervals, for the same reason. 
I also went now and again to the Anglican High 
Church, but did not like it, as I wondered why they 
imitated Catholic worship without being Catholic; 
I went also to the ordinary church of England serv- 
ice. That again puzzled me, as the two services 
were so unlike each other, and yet both were of the 
Church of England. Some years after this I be- 
came acquainted with some Catholic ladies, of 
•whom I asked questions. Now and then I went 
with them to church, and they loaned me books, 
among them being the Imitation of Christ, which 
gave me the idea, for the first time, of reading the 
New Testament, which Jewish people do not read, 

II 



12 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

as part of the Bible. These two books, the Imita- 
tion and the New Testament, were sufficient to 
bring about my ultimate conversion. In the Gos- 
pels I saw how, in all things, Catholics follow 
Christ's teachings, and I decided that if ever I be- 
came a Christian it could only be as a Catholic. 
The wonderful correlation between the seventy- 
one members of the Sanhedrim, presided over by 
the law-giver, Moses, and the seventy-two disciples 
of Our Lord ; with the High Priests in the Old dis- 
pensation, and the Apostles, in the New, at once 
claimed my attention. They seemed to me to find 
their logical fulfillment in the Vicar of Christ, and 
the College of Cardinals. The Pope, through the 
Church, speaks with the same authority as did the 
High Priest presiding over the Sanhedrim. Prot- 
estants, on the contrary, have no teaching head and 
no unity, while all the Catholic churches I have been 
to were exactly alike; and then the fact that they 
alone did what Christ commanded made me certain 
in my own mind that the Catholic church was the 
true one. 

Although born and bred in Judaism, whenever 
I went into a Catholic church I wished I could 
really believe as its members did, and could join 
in the services as a Catholic. I knew, however, 
that to become a Christian was a momentous ques- 
tion; it meant trouble not only for me, but for 
those about me, and I knew I should have to make 
up my mind to face a very hard time. However, 



I 



LAURA M. BAKER 1 3 

the Grace of God was given to me. I took the step 
and was received into the Church sixteen years 
ago. The months following were filled with se- 
vere discipline and suffering, but never for one in- 
stant have I regretted the step I took. Now, as 
Hon. Secretary for the '' Correspondence Guild for 
Enquiring Protestants,'' I have the means of help- 
ing others to find that peace which is found no- 
where so perfectly as in the fold of the one true 
church. 



HON. NICHOLAS D. BECK, 

EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA. 
Judge of the Supreme Court of Alberta. 

It is almost thirty years since — Deo Gratias — 
I was received into the Catholic Church — Civitas 
Dei Regnum Coelorum. 

The A'atican Council declares: ''. . . the Cath- 
olic Church by itself, with its marvelous ex- 
tension, its eminent holiness, and its inexhaustible 
fruitfulness in every good thing; with its Catholic 
unity and its invincible stability, is a great and per- 
petual motive of credibility, and an irrefutable wit- 
ness of its own divine mission." All that I have 
since learned, from past or contemporary history, 
from personal observation in many lands and per- 
sonal intercourse with people of many nationalities, 
and of many religions or none, has gone to make the 
truth of the Council's declaration more and more 
vivid, and more deeply embedded in both heart and 
intellect. 

'' Unum Corpus et unus Spiritus " (Eph. iv. 4) 
*' Credo in Unum Sanctam sanctificantem Eccle- 
siam'' (St. Thomas Aquin, Summa Theol). 

I cannot conceive my joyous belief in the Cath- 

14 



HON. NICHOLAS D. BECK 15 

oHc Church ceasing except, perhaps, if possibly I 
permitted my heart to be corrupted; for then my 
mind might be darkened and the gift of faith with- 
drawn. So long at least as my Coniiteor is sincere 
my Credo is invincible. 



MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEESLEY, 

BY HIS SON, 

THOMAS QUINN BEESLEY, M.A.; F.P.G. 

Thomas Beesley — born in Birmingham, England, on the 
Feast of the Nativity of the B. V. M., September 8, 1829. 
Educated Oxford. Anglican. Physicist and Inventor. 
Converted to Catholicism in America shortly before the 
outbreak of the Civil War. Died in Chicago, Illinois, on 
the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, Holy Week, 
1902. 

In a very real sense is this memoir written ^* Be- 
yond the Road to Rome/' for my father had been 
a dweller in the Eternal City for three decades 
when first I looked upon its towers and battlements. 
Another decade has elapsed since his departure for 
the Heavenly City, the New Jerusalem, yet the re- 
ligious impressions which he left upon my mind are 
as fresh and vivid now, as are those of yesterday. 
And I shall always hold his memory in benediction 
for the heritage of Faith which he bequeathed to 
me. To be born within the gates of Rome is a 
privilege immeasurably precious ! 

Peculiar difficulties present themselves to one 
who would describe another's life within the Church 
and yet who did not struggle with him along the 

16 



MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEESLEY 17 

road that leads to the Holy City. It is hard to 
measure, in the first place, the full joy of the reali- 
zation of the long-sought ideal. Again, it is not 
easy to express the firmness of conviction of her 
Truth, which daily intimacy with the Church in- 
creases in those of candid mind and earnest purpose. 
Nor can one truly know how exquisitely sweet are 
the spiritual fruits of God's kingdom on earth, to 
the eager lips and hearts that are tasting them in all 
their fullness after a long and parching journey. 
'' To him that thirsteth, I will give of the fountain 
of the water of life, freely. He that shall overcome 
shall possess these things, and I will be his God ; and 
he shall be my son" (Apoc. XXI — 6, 7). 

Perhaps, however, one may be permitted to choose 
and to select incidents which, though widely sepa- 
rated in time and kind, might serve to indicate the 
character of the dwelling that sheltered my father 
at the end of his road to Rome. He was a native 
of that distant isle which even Caesar could not 
" pacify," and the very mention of whose name in 
early centuries was full of terror for the magnifi- 
cent but pagan city on the banks of the river Tiber. 
And yet, in later centuries, the captains of God's 
army sent out from Rome invaded that land with 
the Cross as their sword and the Gospel as their 
buckler, and won it unto Christ! And from that 
conquest many roads have since led back to Rome. 
The debris of the Reformation seemed, for a time, 
to close them with impassable barriers. But, with 



l8 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

time, the pendulum was swinging back until, with 
Newman and the Oxford Movement, the hour of 
the Catholic revival in England struck. It was a 
profoundly serious moment for religion in England 
when, between the years 1840 and 1852, ninety- 
two members of the University of Oxford, sixty- 
three of whom were clergymen, and forty-three 
members of Cambridge, of whom nineteen had taken 
holy orders, entered the Catholic Church! 

Father found his path into the Church, as a dis- 
tant aftermath of this great event. It required 
resolute courage for him to carry out his convic- 
tions, but the temporary unhappiness and trials it 
brought him were as nothing to the great peace and 
joy which he knew during his long life at the end 
of the Way. His whole course seemed to be under 
the special patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 
He was born upon the feast of Her Nativity. He 
was received into the Church in the Springtime. 
He died upon the feast of the Annunciation, in Holy 
Week. It was only in the Church itself that he 
found the true meaning of .devotion to the Mother 
of God, which so many of those outside the fold 
so grievously and hopelessly misunderstand. He 
found that the term " Mariolatry " was only the in- 
vention of narrow and prejudiced minds. That to 
whatever extent occasional exaggerations in the ut- 
terances of devotion were to be deplored, still the es- 
sence and soul of the veneration paid to the Mother 
of the Messias was beyond question reverent and 



MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEESLEY 19 

logical. The dignity, the glory, the sanctity of 
Mary, was to father what it was to Wordsworth : 

**Our tainted nature's solitary boast." 

His devotion to the Queen of Angels was constant 
and intense in its zeal. It is scarcely too much to 
say that it colored his whole life in the Church. And 
is it irreverent to consider as something more than 
a unique coincidebce that the day of his birth was 
also the feast of the Virgin's Nativity, and the day 
of his death the feast of the Annunciation? 

Father, too, had an ardent love for the Holy Sac- 
rifice of th^ Mass. Like Newman, to him nothing 
was " so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling, so over- 
coming, as the Mass, said as it is among us." He 
'* could attend Masses forever, and not^^ tired." 
It was to him, as to Newman, '' a great action, the 
greatest action that can be on earth . . . not the 
invocation merely, but, if I dare use the word, the 
evocation of the Eternal. He becomes present on 
the altar in flesh and blood, before whom angels bow 
and devils tremble. This is that awful event which 
is the scope, and the interpretation of every part of 
the solemnity. . . . There are little children there, 
and old men, and simple laborers, and students in 
seminaries, priests preparing for Mass, priests mak- 
ing their thanksgiving, there are innocent maidens, 
and there are penitent sinners; but out of these 
many minds rises one Eucharistic hymn, and the 
great action is the measure and the scope of it." 



20 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

The Real Presence of God upon the altar in the 
Blessed Sacrament was a sublime and humbling 
glon' to father's heart and soul. He realized how 
long he had been without the true Bread of Life, 
how dry for him had been the Fountain of Waters. 
Here at last there was peace, here was strength, 
here was consolation. All the sacramental uncer- 
tainty was gone, all the quibblings swept aside, all 
the fallacies exposed. Xow was there complete as- 
surance of vaHdity, complete conviction of truth, 
now the comfort of the Sacrament of Penance, now 
the Divine Presence in Holy Communion. 

And some of the sweetest moments of father's 
life in Rome were those times when, weary or de- 
pressed or worried, he would pause on his way home 
in the late afternoon, and enter the little Gothic 
parish church to kneel in prayer before the Throne 
of Christ, there to receive into his soul that refresh- 
ment which is promised those who are burdened and 
who come unto Him. *' The eyes of the Lord are 
upon the just and his ears unto their prayers'" (i 
St. Peter iii, 12). Those precious quarter hours 
of prayer were one of the greatest treasures which 
father found beyond the Road. There was a quick- 
ening of his spiritual pulse, and a stimulating of his 
religious consciousness — for here was the true 
Church. The other, the Church of England,, now 
so evidently a merely human institution, seemed but 
a rapidly receding memory of the distant past. 

Father was essentially a forward-looking man. 



MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEESLEY 21 

Perhaps to his scientific experimentation was due this 
philosophizing on the future i'n which he frequently 
indulged. The possibilities of mechanics and of 
electricity fascinated him, but never to the point of 
domination over the things more purely of the in- 
tellect. He believed with Bishop Spalding that the 
more machinery entered into the daily life of the 
world, the more evident it was that man's highest 
and truest sphere was the world of thought, of love, 
of aspiration. Consequently, the problems of 
higher education and particularly df religious edu- 
cation extensively engaged his thought. I empha- 
size religious, because to father it hardly admitted 
of argument that religion is man's first and deepest 
concern — '^ seek ye first the kingdom of God and 
His justice." The future of the race depends so 
much upon proper education, and away from the 
experienced guidance of the Church so much that is 
false is taught as dogma, that father was distressed 
by the purely rationalistic, almost materialistic trend 
of modern instruction. Especially so after his con- 
version, although he was always keenly interested 
in the Church's attitude towards education. He 
was, of course, perfectly familiar before entering 
Catholicism with the various stock criticisms hurled 
at Rome in this regard, and with the venerable 
calumnies that Rome is an enemy to progress, a foe 
to education, the represser of freedom of intellect, 
and always opposed to science. A university man 
himself, he had particular scorn for those in the 



22 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

chairs of learning who held such benighted views. 
And his every day spent at the end of the road to 
Rome, convinced him more and more that those who 
uttered such senseless criticisms were victims either 
of the prejudice of others, or of their own culpable 
lact of correct information. 

Perhaps what I am going to relate may not be 
with the strictest pi*opriety considered one of father s 
religious experiences during his life in Catholicism, 
but his great interest in matters educational and his 
profound conviction of the teaching office of the 
Church was so marked as really to merit a place 
herein. For every succeeding year of his life as 
a Catholic convinced him more and more that the 
Church's stand in the education of the race guaran- 
teed true progress, liberal enlightenment and gen- 
uine Christianity. Xor did he find, after joining the 
Church, that it was necessary to sacrifice any liberty 
or any freedom of thought, for license is never lib- 
erty and free thinking is never real freedom of 
thought — even had he ever indulged in them. And 
so it is to this particular, though it is hoped not ex- 
traneous point, that the present memoir will now be 
directed, in the humble trust that perchance it may 
discover the anathema-breathing dragon supposed 
to lie in wait behind the gates of Rome ready to 
seize upon and devour the unwary intellectual who 
venture therein, and to prove it is a superstition and 
a myth, unworthy of the credence of mature minds! 

It is a matter of fact that professional men are 



MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEESLEY 23 

apt toi be narrow and one-sided, to think in a groove, 
to see only some of the important aspects of a ques- 
tion, with a biased opinion as the result. Histories 
are not unseldom written after this fashion, and are 
correspondingly worthless. Luther, to take a com- 
mon example, is portrayed as having given the Bible 
to the world, whereas there are bibles in existence 
printed in German and in Germany the year Luther 
zvas born. Phys'ical scientists have deduced that 
there is no God from the fact that their telescopes 
did not reveal His presence in the heavens. When 
the microscope will not discover for them the tissue 
of the soul they conclude that it does not exist. And, 
with these pseudo-scientists it is a common thing to 
confuse the unimaginable and the unthinkable and 
then proceed to tear the New Testament to tatters. 
They are, like lago, " nothing if not critical." With 
such, father never had any patience. He could un- 
derstand how a man might be a skillful physician, 
an acute lawyer, a trained theologian, and yet lack 
mental culture, but only on the ground of a complete 
lack of all religion could he comprehend the caprices 
of pseudo-science. For were not Copernicus, Bacon, 
Descartes, Galileo, Newton, Ampere, Faraday, Leib- 
nitz, Pasteur, and Mme. Curie, Christians? 

Nor did father find in the Church the constantly 
reactionary body against which he had been solemnly 
warned. Fie did find a conservative tendency, but 
the truth is always conservative. It is the false 
which flies with the winds. And he found a sane 



24 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

and progressive conservatism, which has always been 
able to adapt itself to constantly changing environ- 
ment, to the character of every people and the par- 
ticular wants of every age. Had she not been so, 
the Church would long ago have been face to face 
with the hopeless problem now confronting Prot- 
estantism — which cannot reach the poor and can- 
not hold the rich. In. fact, college mates of mine 
have said to me upon occasion in all simplicity: 
" Your church seems to have all the poor people." 
Their obvious, though unconsciously snobbish, im- 
plication being that their own denominations (usu- 
ally Episcopalian or Presbyterian), held all the cul- 
tured people. What folly! The reply seemed to 
surprise them, that it was one of the glories of the 
Church that unto the poor the Gospel is preached. 
Yet that same Gospel is listened to in her edifices 
by the most cultured and those in the very highest 
station, who kneel at the canon of the Mass side by 
side with the laborer and the peasant ! 

The attitude was as prevalent, almoist, in father's 
day as it is in ours, that Faith is something to be 
sneered at, something to be rejected; by the reason- 
ing, intellectual man. And by Faith was meant, 
generally, the acceptance of Revelation and adher- 
ence to the Catholic Church. Those who dwell at 
the end of the Road, and many who, by the will of 
God, as yet do not, know that knowledge begins and 
ends in Faith. Father, with them, did not consider 
that he stultified his intellect when he accepted au- 



MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEESLEY 25 

thority, — or when he acknowledged infalhble dog- 
matic utterance. But he did consider that the in- 
evitable logical conclusion to any denial of infalli- 
bility was the denial of revelation itself. Nor did 
he find that the Church kept her children in intel- 
lectual darkness — for he knew that the oracles in 
the temples of Egypt, of Greece, and of Rome 
had been silenced \>y the voice of the Church, that 
superstition had given way to Truth, that the shrines 
of the gods were now the foundations of many a 
basilica ! Father did not live to witness the advent 
of the Modernists, or to behold some of the extrav- 
agances of '' higher criticism " ; but if he had I doubt 
if he would have been much perturbed by some of 
their animadversions. There have always been 
great minds in the Church, and men have been 
searching the Scriptures for centuries! Indeed, as 
Bishop Spalding says, " No gift is incompatible with 
true religion; for has not the Church intellects as 
many-sided and as high as Augustine and Chrysos- 
tom, Dante and Calderon, Descartes and Da Vinci, 
De Vega and Cervantes, Bossuet and Pascal, Saint 
Bernard and Gregory the Seventh, Aquinas and 
Michael Angelo, Mozart and Fenelon? " 

No, the Catholic Church has never been the foe 
of education, provided that it was correct educa- 
tion. One must confess that at times the instru- 
ments which impart education are imperfect and 
yield imperfect results. This should not be, espe- 
cially now at a time in which '' education has be- 



26 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

come the potent factor in the world's progress, in 
which our manifold and ever-growing science has 
placed in our hands new and undreamed-of forces 
wherewith to direct and control political, social, and 
economic life." It was always father's opinion that 
the Church could not afford to be represented by 
ministers who were not thoroughly cultured, or by 
laymen who were imperfectly instructed. The bat- 
tle is too keen for the captains to be other than men 
of might ! And especially now when higher educa- 
tion is rapidly coming within the possibilities of the 
many and is no longer the privilege of the few. 
Those who represent the Church must not only be 
trained in the things of God, but also as well in the 
earthly things of the mind — for culture and faith 
go hand in hand, and the Church of God who is the 
teacher of Truth must necessarily be an imparter of 
culture. Hers have been many of the great minds 
of the past — hers must also be, if the signs of the 
times are an augury, most of the great minds of the 
future ! 

Princeton University, 

Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, 1913. 



THE VERY REV. MONSIGNOR ROBERT 
HUGH BENSON, M.A. 

BUNTINGFORD, HERTS, ENGLAND. 

.1. 
Privy Chamberlain since 191 1 to His Holiness the Pope; son 

of the late Archbishop Benson of Canterbury; author of 
"The Light Invisible," "By What Authority," "The 
King's Achievem.ent," " Lord of the World," " Richard 
Raynal, Solitary," " Come Rack, Come Rope," " The Re- 
ligion of the Plain Man," and numerous other v^orks. 

The only sound reason for submitting to the 
Catholic Church is that the illuminating Grace of 
God, acting through the channels of intellect and 
emotion and intuition, and other faculties and powers 
of human nature, forms a conviction in the convert's 
whole being that that Church is the one organ of 
Divine Revelation, and aids the will to act upon that 
conviction. 

To give an exhaustive account, therefore, of all 
the parts of this process, /in the case of any indi- 
vidual, is of course a hopeless impossibility. The 
man who falls in love with a woman, who marries 
her and thereby stakes his future upon her fidelity, 
who lives with her in harmony and joy, and finds 
that his act of faith was abundantly justified, can- 
not, for all that, analyze precisely all the minute de- 
tails that urged him to it ; still less can he describe 

27 



28 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

the passion that knit those details into a coherent 
unity. Much less, therefore, can a convert to 
Catholicism who, also, " fell in love " v^ith God as 
presented to him in the Visible Society which is 
Christ's Body, give an exact account of all that ex- 
perience. He can only indicate very vaguely the 
kind of lines along which his conviction was formed. 

Briefly: in my pre-Catholic days, when, partly 
because of the hopeless divisions in Protestant 
Christianity, and partly because of the alluring 
aspect of Catholicism, I began to reconsider my 
position, I found that there were two points from 
which light might be expected. The first was Scrip- 
ture, and the second was History. For here are 
two things that come from God, and each of them 
outside of myself. Scripture, I believed in com- 
mon with Christians in general, to be the Word of 
God; and History is a kind of record of God's 
dealings with men — a working out, so to speak, of 
the principles revealed in Scripture. A good deal 
might be expected, therefore, from a comparison 
of one with another. They stand in the same kind 
of relations, one with the other, as a book on arith- 
metic would to a blackboard covered with calcula- 
tions. 

Now Scripture, it is notorious, is capable of in- 
numerable interpretations, if the one guide to its 
meaning lies in Private Judgment. Five equally 
learned and devout men may read such a sentence 
as '' This is My Body," or *' Whosoever sins you 



ROBERT HUGH BENSON, M.A. 29 

forgive, they are forgiven/' and interpret it each 
in his own way. Now, in spite of this drawback. 
Private Judgment was, as a matter of fact, the best 
and indeed, the only instrument I had; since the 
very point on which I was in doubt was as to the ex- 
istence, or the identification of any other. I 
could not accept (so soon as my doubts became 
formidable) the^ teaching of the Anglican Church 
as to the meaning of Scripture, since it was pre- 
cisely of this right of Anghcanism to teach that I 
doubted. Neither could I any more accept the 
Catholic teaching, since I also doubted of this. 
Still less could I accept blindly the authority of any 
individual, however learned or holy, since first it is 
obvious I could not give Divine Faith to a mere 
man like myself, and secondly, there was always to 
be found another equally learned or holy man who 
contradicted the first. 

I was left then with Private Judgment, and Pri- 
vate Judgment only, as my guide. I was forced 
to hope that since I was responsible for my own soul 
(and no one else) God would help and illuminate 
that Reason which, though fallible and limited, still 
was a gift from Him. 

I turned first to Scripture then, and tried to read 
it without prejudice, as if it were a direct message 
from God to me. I knew it was much more than 
this; but at least it was this. I had already read 
all the controversialists I could find on either side ; 
but like the woman in the Gospel who had spent all 



30 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

her substance upon physicians, I grew worse. I 
tried, therefore, to set all these aside, and to come 
to Christ so far as He showed Himself to me in 
the garments of Scripture. 

Now my Private Judgment upon Scripture told 
me that the simplest interpretation of Christ's 
words, as regarded the authority by which Chris- 
tianity must be interpreted, was that He appointed 
Peter to be the Head of His Church, and that He 
intended the office of Peter to be the permanent 
foundation of that Church. The " Good Shep- 
herd " bade Peter feed His sheep ; the ^' One Foun- 
dation '' named Cephas as the Rock on which the 
Church should be built; the "Door" gave Peter 
the Keys. These, and twenty-six other less signifi- 
cant texts, appeared to my Private Judgment, there- 
fore, to support the Roman Catholic claims. 

But how was I to test the soundness of my view ? 
The only other guide I had w^as, as has been said, 
History. So I turned to History in its broadest as- 
pect; and there I became aware of a startling cor- 
roboration of my view. For I found, roughly 
speaking, that those Christians who based their re- 
ligion upon that view, were remarkable throughout 
the whole world, and through the whole course of 
it, for complete unanimity upon all other points of 
doctrine ; that they produced Saints such as no other 
body produced; and that those signs and marvels 
accompanied them which Christ said should accom- 
pany His disciples. 



ROBERT HUGH BENSON, M.A. 3I 

And, on the other side, I found that those who 
rejected the Petrine claims were notoriously dis- 
united on points of doctrine, that they did not pro- 
duce that supernatural type of holiness which is 
called sanctity, and that they were beginning to give 
up even a belief in that kind of supernatural inter- 
vention which is called miraculous. 

History, then, seemed to me to corroborate that 
which appeared to be the evident meaning of Scrip- 
ture, and the record of God in His dealings with 
men in general. It ratified the record of that par- 
ticular and unique dealing of God with men which 
we call Revelation. 

It was along these lines, therefore, that the Grace 
of God acted in my particular case. Since my con- 
version to the Catholic Church, it has still been along 
those lines that my faith has been confirmed and 
strengthened; for I suppose it is unnecessary to say 
that it has been so strengthened. As I look back on 
Protestantism, or upon Anglicanism in particular, 
I am amazed that it ever could have held me at all. 
I cannot conceive — (although I know that such is 
the case) — that it can retain to-day one intelligent 
prayerful man, or that it can give, as it undoubtedly 
does give to some temperaments, a sense of stabil- 
ity and security. I can only conclude that such 
men, in spite of their intelligence and their prayer, 
do not really face the question as to the foundation 
on which their faith rests, but remain content with 
the Objects of Faith. They know and love Jesus 



32 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

Christ; they mistake the overflowing grace which 
He gives in answer to their love, for actual Sacra- 
mental Grace, they study and revere the Scriptures ; 
and it seems to them, when perplexity rises, that 
those Objects of Faith, and His Grace, are sufficient 
— (as indeed they are, if men are true to consci- 
ence). 

But they do not seriously penetrate to the grounds 
of faith, or if they do, they start back appalled by 
the sacrifices — (I do not mean pecuniary or worldly 
sacrifices) — which a change of religion would in- 
volve: they start back from such acts of abject hu- 
mihty, for instance, as the acceptance of Rome's 
judgment of the Orders of their clergy, and take 
refuge again in the objects of faith and ordinary un- 
sacramental grace. 

For the whole system under which they live is 
one wild and whirling confusion. Scarcely two of 
them agree altogether as to the place of Authority 
in Christ's Religion, or its scope, or its limitations; 
scarcely two of them can agree as to where that Au- 
thority resides, or how it speaks, or when. And 
yet without an Authority, there cannot be a Revela- 
tion; for a Revelation is not that which men w^ork 
out for themselves; it is a body of truth which God 
proposes. How, therefore, does God propose this ? 
By what authority? 

I find, then, this confusion everywhere, wherever 
the Petrine authority is not accepted; or if not con- 
fusion, at least stagnation. 



ROBERT HUGH BENSON, M.A. 33 

Then, when as a Catholic of ten years' standing, 
I turn to the Church of which I am a member by 
God's grace, I find precisely the opposite. There 
are quarrels, indeed, among Catholics; there are 
unedifying incidents and persons; there are as many 
divisions, in purely human matters, as among Prot- 
estants on divine matters. But amongst Catholics, 
on divine matters, there are no divisions at all. 
That tiny fragment of history, of which I have 
had personal experience, once more corroborates 
and ratifies — (as did the general history which I 
studied before my conversion) — that which so long 
ago appeared to me as the evident meaning of Scrip- 
ture. Ubi Petrus; Ibi Ecdesia. Where Peter is, 
there is the Church; there is, and nowhere else, an 
intelligible coherent Authority such as revelation 
demands ; there is unity and clearness on those mat- 
ters on which alone we have a right to demand unity 
and clearness — on affairs of Faith and Morals, 
by which alone we can please God and come to Him. 

So, too, as I regard Scripture through Catholic 
eyes, I find a unity and a coherence that I could 
never find as an Anglican. There are the great 
Representatives of God in the Old Law, Moses, 
Aaron, Samuel, David — men who each sustained 
and represented one function of Him who is Law- 
giver, Priest, Prophet and King, and who should 
follow and fulfill these types hereafter. Here is 
the Church of Visible Unity of the Old Law, that 
" peculiar people " chosen out from the world as a 



34 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

model, in spite of all their shortcomings and in- 
fidelities; as a type in spite of their deformities. 
Here is the ordered code of worship and sacrifice 
and faith and morals, revealed by God, and em- 
bodied in Israel. 

Then Christ comes, not to destroy, but to fulfill, 
to break down not one growth of God's garden, but 
only its boundaries, that all the earth may be Para- 
dise. And therefore the Church of the Old Dis- 
pensation must become the Church of the New, 
and the Xew must keep the glory of the Old, with- 
out its limitations. Here, therefore, stands the 
New Jerusalem, come down from God out of 
Heaven. It is Visibly One as the Old was Visibly 
One; it too has its sacrifices, its worship, its faith 
and its morals revealed by God and embodied in the 
new Israel — no longer one nation, but all of every 
tongue, and people and tribe. And here, above all, 
is the New Representative of Christ, bearing all 
together that of w^hich Moses and David, and Aaron 
and Samuel could each bear but a part; here is 
the very Vicar of Christ Himself, a Lawgiver un- 
der God, binding in Heaven what he binds on earth ; 
a Prophet in that he is safeguarded from uttering 
error; a King since he is their father and overlord 
under Christ; a Priest after the Order of ]\Ielchise- 
dech. 

It is the Catholic Church which alone makes sense 
of Scripture, as it is the Catholic Church alone that 
is the key to history. 



ROBERT HUGH BENSON, M.A. 35 

I suspected this when I first submitted to her au- 
thority; and now, after ten years, I can only say in 
the words of the Queen of Sheba when she saw the 
glory of Solomon, that " the half was not told me/' 



MALTON BOYCE, 

WASHINGTON^ D. C. 

Director of St. Matthew's Choir, Washington ; cousin of Lord 
Alver stone, late Lord Chief Justice of England. 

I 

It may perhaps not be amiss in writing these ex- 
periences to relate shortly the circumstances before, 
as well as after my reception into the Church. 

Toi begin with, then, I was brought up very 
strictly Church of England, and very early taught 
to abhor all forms oi dissent from that church, by 
which was meant all sects of Protestantism, of 
which there was one in the village in England, where 
my father was and still is Vicar. I well remem- 
ber as a child the superior air with which we always 
looked down on " Chapel people '' as we called them, 
and the feeling almost of horror that always gripped 
me as I went by their little ugly chapel and the an- 
noyance I felt because it was nearer to the center 
of the village than my father's church. This 
church, I may remark, is a perfectly beautiful speci- 
men of a small medieval English Church (built by 
Bodley only about 20 years ago), with rood screen 
and Lady Chapel, all exquisitely proportioned; 
worthy in every way for a House of God; and it 

36 



MALTON BOYCE 37 

naturally was a great attraction to us, and was very 
much admired. 

Of Catholics I knew then nothing: the one and 
only impression I ever had of them was that they 
worshipped the Virgin Mary, for so I remember be- 
ing told. This was firmly engraved on my mind; 
personally, however (though I did not say so), I 
did not see any great harm in it, even if others did! 
I never came into contact with any Catholics at all, 
indeed it was not until I was fifteen that I went to 
reside permanently in a large town; of which more 
later. Of dogma or doctrine I assimilated nothing; 
nor of course did I learn of Grace as we understand 
it. I did learn the catechism in the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer, as far as the words went, but the hold 
it had on my reason, my will, or my heart, was ab- 
solutely nil. I do not speak of what my instructors 
wished to teach, but of what I learnt; of what I 
apprehended ; of what made a conscious impression 
on my young mind. But that those who were my 
instructors had themselves any very clear idea of 
what the particular doctrines they taught meant, I 
do not now believe; in fact, I do not know to this 
day what is my father's attitude towards certain 
burning questions that are troubling the Church of 
England, much less what he believes of the various 
doctrines of Christianity, as, for example, the Pres- 
ence of Christ in the Eucharist. But that he has 
strong opinions and an exceedingly strong will to 
back them up I do know. The fate of the Church 



38 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

of England seems to be an inability to teach dogmas 
because there is no authority behind them, however 
much her individual ministers may firmly believe 
them to be true. They remain really and only opin- 
ions, which each member may hold for himself as 
he pleases. That they do so hold them is proved 
in every parish in England and America; wherever 
in fact the Church of England is, there is diversity 
of opinion on fundamental doctrines, on the nature 
and number of the Sacraments, not only among the 
laity, but more so among her ministers, of whom 
part now call themselves priests, though this claim 
is fiercely repudiated by the other part; facts which 
must utterly prevent any teaching with success. She 
agrees perfectly on the multiplication table, and is in 
consequence able to teach it with confidence and 
success; the same may be said in a perhaps lesser 
degree of the other sciences and arts; in religion 
alone, England is so far from unanimity that actual 
variability of opinion is not only not to be shunned, 
but is even thought highly desirable. 

At the age of fourteen I went to Nottingham to 
stay for a short time with my uncle, a very definite 
and High Churchman. I well remember the interest 
I felt at my first " High Mass," with the lights, the 
acolytes, and the pleasurable smell of incense, the mu- 
sic, etc. ; how very much more interesting I thought 
it than the, to me, monotonous service of Matins or 
Morning Prayer. Here at my uncle's I first heard 
the word Catholic used' with a definite meaning. 



MALTON BOYCE 39 

It conveyed, however, but one thing to my mind, 
and that was expressed in a question to him, one 
day, which must, I fear, have annoyed him by its 
obtuseness: "You mean Roman CathoHc, of 
course? " He denied it; " No, no; Anglo CathoHc,'' 
was his answer, and I said no more, but nevertheless 
I w^as of the same opinion still! Not indeed that I 
thought it any particular harm ; only to my unsophis- 
ticated mind it appeared passing strange, even im- 
possible, that two such opposites as his Church and 
my father's could belong to the same organization. 

He always insisted on our going to " Mass " every 
Sunday; he always himself received Communion 
fasting; he heard Confessions (though this I did 
not know until later), and sang Requiem Masses, 
and was most definite in his teaching as far as he 
went, that is, up to the Supremacy of the Pope (and 
perhaps also the doctrine of the Immaculate Con- 
ception) ; there he stopped short, unlike one of his 
greatest friends (now a devoted Catholic Priest) 
who used, I learnt later, to advocate even that doc- 
trine (I believe from the pulpit) ! 

About one year later I went to stay in the small 
town of Guilford, where there was a large and fash- 
ionable church. Here I received Confirmation and 
Holy Communion according to the Church of Eng- 
land. I was carefully prepared ; and later was asked 
by the Assistant Curate who was " instructing " me, 
and who was somewhat " High Church " (though 
in contradiction to the Church he was in) if I cared 



40 BEYOXD THE ROAD TO ROME 

to go to Confession, which I did. The book we 
followed was ^lortimer's CathoHc Faith. Both my 
Confession and Communion, however, were highly 
emotional, a very undesirable state for me, as I can 
now see, and equally of course this intense feeling 
very quickly vanished, leaving me worse oft than be- 
fore. How could it be otherwise ? I had no Faith, 
nor yet any foundation on which to rest what little 
I believed from reading ^lortimer's book. 

Shortly after^vards I returned to the city where 
my uncle lived, but this time to a church position 
where I played the organ and studied music in many 
of its branches, under my master to whom I was 
articled, and of whom I shall have more to say. In 
this church were also taught practically the same 
doctrines as my uncle held. 

By, and on what authority, they and he taught 
these advanced doctrines I do not know. Certainly 
not by that of their Bishop or the two Archbishops 
of the Anglican Church: certainly not with the au- 
tliority of the Church of Rome, for she repudiated 
tnem and their pretensions : and it requires consid- 
erable stretching of the Book of Common Prayer 
for it to stand as endorsing such doctrines, where it 
does not actually condemn them. They had no 
church to which they could appeal with any hope of 
recognition, much less approval. Theirs was and is 
only private judgment once removed; they have 
taken an idea of a Church and set it up. and taught 
what they imagined to be its teachings. There 



MALTON BOYCE 4I 

never was any such Church as they seem to claim, 
and it does not seem likely that there ever will be, 

Here, then, I first began to learn something about 
these doctrines, to read about and to comprehend my 
faith, and to try to give some reason for it. Here, 
also, I was brought into contact with many people, 
some of them Catholics, even Catholic Priests — 
Roman Catholics as I called them. 

Here my Master, who was and always had been a 
most advanced Churchman, took me for the first 
time into the Catholic Cathedral ; the first time I had 
ever been in any Catholic Church, and I well remem- 
ber my sudden fear lest I should be perhaps seized 
by some Priest and taken I knew not where ! Fool- 
ish, of course; but such is the power of the Prot- 
estant Tradition of which Newman speaks in his 
wonderful Lectures on the Present Position of Cath- 
olics in England. At the Cathedral entrance was 
the familiar stand of Pamphlets, which — my first 
visit being only one O'f many, in accordance with a 
broad minded theory that we and they were all one 
Church — I soon took to reading eagerly, and with 
which I very soon learned to agree ; pamphlets which 
have made clear to me sO' many points, because of 
their clean cut, logical, but at the same time gentle 
reasoning in relation to the differences between the 
Church and the sects, of which there are so many. 
Here, too, I learned tO' know and love that wonder- 
ful Chant, so melodious, so placid, so prayerful, so 
elevating, the Plain Chant which we invariably used 



42 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

at our own Church at '* High Mass " and Evensong. 
It was here, too, that I soon assimilated all the most 
advanced doctrines put forward by the High Church 
Party, and in particular I was quite firmly convinced, 
from the evidences of Scripture, and the testimony of 
the Fathers, that the Pope was the Head of the 
Church, to which I believed I belonged ; indeed, at a 
later period we fiercely denied the Church of Eng- 
land any right to think for herself on any matter 
of Faith or Morals, and scarcely of Discipline or 
Ceremonial. We believed in the whole Church, and 
granted no powers to such a minute fraction of it 
as the two Provinces of Canterbury and York. 

This was our last stand : Why go over to Rome ? 
said we: here we are, with our beautiful churches, 
built after Catholic models, with Catholic services 
(so they were outwardly), with CathoHc Doctrines; 
we have everything (so we said), we believe every- 
thing, why can we not be content with all these 
things, what more can anyone want? 

There was one thing, however, that rankled al- 
ways, nay more, pierced me through as an arrow, 
each time I read it, or heard it read, or thought of it : 
'' Thou art Peter , and upon this rock I will build my 
Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against 
it; and I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of 
Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt hind on earth 
shall be bound in Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt 
loose on earth shall he loosed in Heaven/' Were we 
with Peter ? In the soul, yes ! In the body ? Could 



MALTON BOYCE 43 

I so deceive myself as to think that? It was on the 
face of it, an absurdity. Well, then, but was it nec- 
essary to be in the body with Peter? Was every- 
thing that was not with him against him? I pro- 
crastinated; I delayed thinking about that; I was 
held by our own beautiful service, the wonderful 
melody of the English of the King James Bible, and 
more especially of the Psalms of the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer, in comparison with which the Catholic 
Musical Service was an abomination to me and the 
Catholic translations a thorn in the flesh; perhaps 
also I was held by '' bread and butter " reasons, as 
we called them afterwards. Yes! feeble reasons in- 
deed they are I know; but those who have trodden 
the same path know how hard it is to " let go " and 
what frail threads for excuses one will cling to at 
such a time. But the measureless, resistless might 
of the Mercy of God was pushing me on (as I see 
now) and one memorable day, Oct. 12, 1902 (curi- 
ously enough, or rather, as I prefer to think super- 
naturally enough; my Name Saint's Day), moved 
by some definite impulse, I got up from some work 
I was doing, went out to the Cathedral, not five min- 
utes' walk away, and there before the Blessed Sacra- 
ment I knelt and. made an Act of Faith in the Cath- 
olic Church. I believed I had crossed the Rubi- 
con; whatever happened afterwards, nothing could 
undo that. I went at once and wrote home to the 
effect that I must become a Catholic. By return of 
post came letters imploring me not to do anything 



44 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

of the kind, in any case not to be hasty, above all 
things not to do anything in a hurry. Such indeed 
was the general chorus, from all my relations and 
friends. While it did not in the least change my 
mind, it had its effect. In any case, I was not pre- 
pared to move at once, for I had nothing settled, 
except to become a Catholic. Thank God nothing 
changed that, and although unable to see any way 
before me, this settled decision remained with me. 

Practically nothing more was said for perhaps 
fifteen or sixteen months, when through differences 
with the Rector, I lost my position. Here then 
was the point for which I had been waiting. No 
excuse could avail me now, and so I wrote home 
again that I had, as they wished, waited — too long 
indeed — and since I was of precisely the same mind 
as in the previous October year, I proposed to be- 
come a Catholic at once. Then came more letters, 
full of astonishment. '^ Why, we thought you had 
forgotten all about it, you never referred to it.'' 
Forgotten! Had I ever forgotten for even one 
day? There followed all the old arguments with 
which converts will all be painfully familiar. When 
these were of no avail they made the most trying 
appeal of all : '* Do come home and talk it over." 
I felt then, and I am convinced now, that the mercy 
of God, which had opened the way for me to this 
point, showed me that here was the most danger- 
ous argument of all; if I went home it would be to 
walk away from the light and to lose the oppor- 



MALTON BOYCE 45 

tunity then granted me; and I can never be suffi- 
ciently thankful for the grace that gave me courage 
to say : '* Could I be instructed by the Priest in the 
little mission in the nearest town?'' The answer 
was '' no;^' nor could I go to my sister (who had 
married a clergyman), and be instructed while there 
by any Priest. For the first time then in my life I 
flatly disobeyed my father. I refused to go home ; 
and again the Lord opened a way for me. A cer- 
tain Priest whom I had known previously, and who 
was in charge of a mission, wrote me or told me 
(I forget which: I forget, too, how he knew of my 
predicament) to come and stay with him and he 
would give me instruction. I went; and one of the 
first letters I received there was one from my father 
containing a check, which he could ill afford, for 
fear, he said, I should be short of funds. Such 
kindness, as unexpected as it was welcome, was truly 
hard to receive, when I had so to wound him in re- 
turn. Only by setting my mind firmly on the goal, 
closing my eyes to earthly sentiments and affections, 
and pressing forward blindly, indifferent to feel- 
ings, was I able to withstand the pressure. Never 
shall I forget the next five weeks, nor the careful 
and solid instruction I received from that devoted 
Priest; nor will the memory ever fade of that morn- 
ing when the telegram, the answer to an inquiry as 
to when I could be received, came from a Priest in 
the same town where I had lived so long, and by 
whom I was for various reasons to be received, 



46 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

saying just this: *' Thursday at eleven." I have 
it still, this telegram, that meant so much to me. 

Thither then I travelled on Wednesday, July 6, 
1904, to find that my dear Master (under whom I 
had worked for four years), who had travelled to 
the same goal as I by a different route, was to be 
received by the same Priest at the same hour. 

II 

On Thursday, July 7, 1904, then, in company with 
my Master, who had taught me more than he was, 
I think, aware, in other realms than that of music, 
I, abjuring all schisms and heresies and any other 
religion than the one she taught, made my solemn 
Profession of Faith, received Conditional Baptism, 
made my General Confession, and w^as received into 
the Bosom of Holy Mother Church. It does not 
seem possible to me that I shall ever forget that 
wonderful day. It was, exteriorly, one of those 
ideal English summer days, than which none is more 
beautiful; the description of which, however, may 
well be left to pens more facile than mine; whilst 
interiorly the peace which reigned can only be de- 
scribed as the Peace that passeth all understanding. 
Those who have experienced it know; it would be 
impossible to explain it satisfactorily to others. To 
feel that one is at last safe on the Rock, that Rock 
on which the Church w^as built; to realize that one 
was at last a member of that very church against 
which the gates of Hell never have prevailed and 



MALTON BOYCE 47 

never will prevail ; with which Christ was, and is to 
be until the end of time; which He had founded as 
His Bride and which had always remained and 
would always remain so; to know, with a clear cer- 
tainty exactly what one was to believe, and to do, 
in order to be saved, and to know it on the authority 
of that church which God Himself had commis- 
sioned and to which He had given His message for 
the world; without disputes, without doubt, without 
fear, for rich, wise and simple alike ; to find that this 
was indeed the path of salvation, in which fools 
should not err ; I say that to know, to realize, to feel, 
to find all this, was to be in such a position that one 
trembled at the immensity thereof. That day when, 
in company with a few friends, a brake ride was 
taken into the country, the endless refrain of my 
meditations the day long was " I am a Catholic,'' 
^' I am a Catholic," " I am a Catholic '' ; scarcely 
anything else could I say or even think of. Every 
stone, every tree, every brook, everything seemed 
suddenly to have fitted into its place with a click, 
and to be in harmony with itself, with the world, 
with us, with its God. The riddle of the Universe 
was solved, for here was the key! Though to- 
morrow the clouds might rise and obscure the glori- 
ous sun, the mists of earthly difficulties close in on 
us, the storms of passion and pain burst upon us 
and buffet us, and perhaps for a time overwhelm us, 
at least to-day all was clear and unclouded and we 
might rejoice in the exaltation of our Spirit. It 



48 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

was no mere sentimental emotion that sprang from 
a feeling of gratitude, it was an overwhelming con- 
dition of mind produced from without, something 
of which I was not the cause nor had any part in 
producing. It was as different from an emotional 
devotion as light from darkness. 

On the Sunday following I received my first Holy 
Communion, and in the evening of the same day, 
the Sacrament of Confirmation. Of the former it 
will not be expected of me to say much. Some ex- 
periences are too sacred for words, and must remain 
forever untold. Never once, however, neither then 
nor since, have I failed on the blissful occasions of 
the receiving of the Body and Blood of our Blessed 
Lord, to receive the help and consolation that I was 
in need of, or it might be reproof (alas! that the oc- 
casion required it) ; but ever was He the tenderest 
of Surgeons, cut sharply and deeply though He 
might have to. 

What then of my other post-convert experiences? 
One of the things prominent in my mind is the re- 
ality of Grace, in the Catholic Church, and the fact 
that the Sacraments do confer Grace per se, of them- 
selves, without dependence upon the disposition of 
the recipient; and that this Grace is a real percepti- 
ble influence, a definite gift of God, outside our- 
selves. Gone are all the emotional strainings after 
" feeling good " that were a corollary of the recep- 
tion of the Sacraments in the Church of England; 
in their place is a solid reasonable performance of a 



M ALTON BOYCE 49 

work, as necessary and as satisfactory to the soul 
as a good meal to the body. One may not always 
experience satisfaction, it is not necessary and may 
not be good for one, that one should; but there is 
never any unreasonableness in it; performing our 
duty to the best of our ability at the time, we know 
that it cannot fail to bear fruit, and are content to 
leave the rest in the hands of Him who made and 
knows us. That is the secret; doing, not feeling; 
the latter may or may not be present, but nothing 
must interfere with the former. So it is in one's 
daily life. Say your prayers, though you feel dry- 
ness of heart; go to the Sacraments, though you ex- 
perience no feelings oi joy, little or no emotion at 
the time; perform your daily tasks, though they be 
tedious, monotonous, laborious; forgive your ene- 
mies, because it is humiliating to you ; control your 
temper even though it hurt you ; be patient, though 
you be boiling with anger. In a word, regard not 
how you feel, but do. 

Then further, when the '^ doing " is very hard, 
and it may be, left undone ; or the habits and passions 
of early life will not " down," but some time rise up 
and smite you, even to the ground, there remains, in 
that wonderful Storehouse of God's mercy, His 
Church, the opportunity of wiping away, of totally 
obliterating, those negligences, ignorances and hard- 
nesses of heart; it may be also, sad though it be, 
that there are sins, perhaps many and continued, but 
no matter how long continued or how many, we have 



50 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

the opportunity of a fresh start in life, by the means 
of a good Confession; no one the wiser but God, the 
Priest, and yourself; the first Who has promised to 
forget, the second, who is not allowed to remember, 
and the third, who is, as it were, taken up out of the 
deep mire, and set upon the straight and narrow 
way, wath a face turned once more in the right direc- 
tion. Then may we once more partake of that Food 
of Angels, that heavenly Alanna, the precious Body 
and Blood of Christ Jesus our Lord, whereby w^e are 
enabled to continue our arduous journey through 
life and with perseverance be received at last into 
the Heavenly Kingdom. 

All done, it may be, in a business-like, but always 
thoroughly efficient manner, as such an important 
matter as the educating and strengthening of our 
immortal soul would seem to require; and to me 
at least the more satisfactory for that reason. We 
are made with bodies as well as with souls, and can- 
not disassociate them, when attending even to the 
matter of our religion which is concerned, of course, 
chiefly with the soul. To Anglicans, and to the 
majority of the other Protestants, a state of mind 
that can delight in a business-like method of prac- 
ticing religion is quite inexplicable. All must be left 
vague and nebulous, everything dependent on the 
feelings, the emotions, rather than on the will. They 
seem unable to appreciate the Catholic teaching that 
the Sacraments are certain channels of Grace, 
through which, as it were, Grace will flow, inde- 



MALTON BOYCE 5 1 

pendent of the disposition of the recipient. Let it 
not be thought of course for a minute that I am sug- 
gesting that it is unnecessary to prepare one's self 
for the reception of the Sacraments, or to try to re- 
ceive them with other than the best possible disposi- 
tions ! 

Just as the teaching of doctrines in the Church of 
England is vague, indefinite, variable, so is the teach- 
ing of the Catholic Church clear, definite, invariable. 
She tells you definitely and clearly what you must 
believe and do, and how you must do it, and has 
taught the same Faith in the same way ever since 
She was established, and will do so until the end 
of time, without hesitation, resolutely, steadfastly. 
For myself, I affirm with delight, like William 
George Ward, that were she to propose to me every 
week a fresh Dogma for my belief, I would give 
my assent to and beheve them as gladly and as wil- 
lingly as I assent to and believe every other Dogma 
that she has in the course of time so proposed, and 
on exactly the same grounds, namely the authority 
to proclaim these Dogmas given to her by our Lord 
Himself; whether it be the Dogma of the Blessed 
Trinity, in the third century, or the Dogma of the 
Blessed Sacrament, in the twelfth century, or the 
Dogma of the Immaculate Conception and the In- 
fallibility of the Pope in the nineteenth century, or 
some other Dogma, contained to be sure in the 
original deposit of Faith, but yet to be unfolded to 
the faithful, in the fullness of time, by Christ 



52 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

through His Mouthpiece, the CathoHc Church, and 
through its Head on Earth, Christ's Vicar, the 
Pope. 

That is another point which impresses me most 
forcibly, I mean the complete change of one's atti- 
tude; formerly one beHeved such and such a doc- 
trine, because one beheved it was found in the 
Bible (on what authority did we believe the Bible 
was the Bible?) or that it was taught by the '' early 
and undivided" Church of the first centuries 
(though what claim such a Church could have on 
us in the 20th century I know not), or for some 
other fantastical reason; now we believe because 
the Church teaches, and we know that whatever 
it is it is true because she teaches it. We do, I 
think, but put into effect Christ's own words, 
" Hear the Church.'' We believe a living Body 
the living mouthpiece of our Lord Himself, Who 
left her to take His place; a Body that cannot go 
wrong nor change nor falter; and we are content. 
It is like coming out of darkness into light; like 
wandering, rudderless and guideless over a tem- 
pestuous sea, and being suddenly brought into the 
Haven where we would be, where is a fair and 
beauteous City, founded on a Rock, and filled with 
all delights. Trials, troubles, tribulations, tempta- 
tions, all these we have still, no doubt, but there is 
always the quiet church where the Lord resides in 
His Tabernacle; to Whom we can always betake 



MALTON BOYCE 53 

ourselves in time of stress, and be sure of a patient 
hearing and of certain help. 

This is, I suppose, the greatest of all blessings, 
that the very Lord who died for us on Calvary and 
now reigns in glory in Heaven, is also present with 
us on each Altar, free of access to all, and ready, 
nay, anxious to hear and bless all. It is something 
which seems difficult even for Catholics thoroughly 
to realize. How much sympathy should we not 
have then for those poor souls outside, who per- 
haps do not even know that the Lord is with us 
always? It seems to me that they should be the 
special object of our prayers, since we converts also 
have been even as they are, and cannot say that it is 
due to our own merits that we have been enabled 
to come out of it. To me it is a mystery that Al- 
m.ighty God should so trouble Himself about such 
a one as myself; and I feel in the position of him 
who had the talents given him, and tremble lest I 
should be unfaithful to so much love and trust. 
Much could be said of the " sweet reasonableness " 
of the Faith; argument will do little however — 
it will do nothing, nay, it may cause positive harm, 
particularly when the disputants do not take the 
trouble even to meet on common ground, so that 
one is arguing from premises that to the other are 
entirely false. Those outside the Church are in the 
position of being outside a stained glass window; 
let them look at it from any point there, and they 



54 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME • 

will look in vain. Prayer alone can make them 
walk round and get on the right side of the win- 
dow. It would seem an impossible thing to hap- 
pen perhaps, in many cases; to us Yes! but with 
God ? There is the point ; present those hard cases 
before the Throne of Grace, and they will insensi- 
bly soften and miraculously change their very na- 
tures by the dropping of the gentle rain of God's 
Grace which we shall implore and obtain for them. 
And when can we find a better opportunity than 
when we are at Holy Communion and when is He 
readier to hear us than then? Let us, then, espe- 
cially those of us who have loved ones on the other 
side, make a point of remembering them at every 
Holy Communion, as being something definite and 
practical to do for them, and our efforts can not be 
in vain. Let at least our experiences avail for them 
as much as possible ; we know what they have not, 
and what it would mean for them to possess what 
we possess, through the mercy of God, Who has 
visited us with the light from on high, whereby we 
were enabled to come from darkness into light, 
namely, the gift of Faith. That He may bring 
us all at the Last Day to the glorious Light of His 
Countenance, where Faith shall be lost in sight, that 
we may rejoice and reign with Him in eternal Hap- 
piness in Heaven, is my constant and earnest prayer. 



J. L. BRADLEY, B.A. (Oxford), 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 

Sometime instructor at Beaumont College, England, recently 

tutor in the family of Count de Buisseret, Belgian 

Ambassador to St. Petersburg. 

There are many religious opinions in the world, 
but there is only one Divine Reality. The various 
forms of Protestantism are only different arrange- 
ments of opinions corresponding to human idiosyn- 
crasies. Protestantism stands for the right of man 
to have " views " about God, and " Quot homines 
tot sententiae." Catholicism is the revelation of 
God's '' view " about man and consequently the ne- 
gation of man's right to have '^ views " about God. 

Supernatural faith is to the Catholic what reason 
is to the Mathematician and experience within the 
Catholic Church is little more than the realization 
of this fact. 

If a man desires to become a Catholic, he must 
sell his possessions, particularly his theoretical ones, 
for it will cost a great deal to buy the field wherein 
Divine Reality lies hidden from the gaze of men. 
The convert does not cease to think, but he begins 
to know and that knowledge, which is the result of 
the act of faith, is impatient of theories and opin- 
ions because it is the truth making us free. Per- 

55 



S6 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

haps, on the very eve of reception, assent of the 
Church's faith may seem an act of self-abnegation 
almost terrible in its intensity, but when once assent 
is given, faith becomes the proving of things un- 
seen. The convert realizes that the Catholic Church 
sees the world as God sees it and therefore as it is. 
Catholicism brings a man into relation with reality 
and if he simply desires God's will disillusionment 
with the Church is impossible, for the soul cannot 
be disillusioned with God, but only with itself and 
wath men : and the Church is the mystical body of 
Christ. 

But the act of faith involves the submission of the 
whole personality, it is not merely an assent to a 
new series of propositions. Men have thought 
themselves into the Catholic Church and thought 
themselves out again and apparently with the great- 
est ease; clearly they have never realized Catholi- 
cism as a revelation (revelatio revelata) which nec- 
essarily involves submission because it is the Truth. 

Supernatural faith is the focus of Catholicism 
and this faith is God's gift. Here lies the secret 
of the world's hatred and of the Catholic's strength, 
the source of that simplicity which is the attraction 
and despair of those w^ithout. 

Dogmas are not the conclusions of a speculative 
philosophy, but facts which make the spiritual life 
possible. A Catholic may be sympathetic and ap- 
preciative, he may know that there is a great deal 
said against his Faith, but he knows also that '' ten 



J. L. BRADLEY, B.A. 57 

thousand difficulties do not make one doubt " and 
for this reason his thought can never be comprehen- 
sive in the AngHcan sense of the word. As a Prot- 
estant one marvelled at this simplicity of faith, it 
seemed very like the temperament of the early Chris- 
tians and very bizarre in the 20th century. 

Anglicanism strives to unite men by a compre- 
hensive theory of which '' Central Churchmanship " 
is the most recent expression. 

Catholicism does unite men by submission to spir- 
itual facts which are incomprehensible because they 
are real. 



KATHERINE C. BREGY, 

PHILADELPHIA, PA. 

Author; essayist; contributor of articles and poems to the 
Forum, Lip pine ott's Magazine, the Catholic World, the 
Rosary Magazine, etc. Author of The Poets' Chantry 
(Herbert & Daniel> London, 1912; B. Herder, 1913). 

ONE WINDOW AT THE INN. 

I believe that my " conversion " to the Catholic 
Faith was, humanly speaking, very much a matter 
of " reversion " or atavism. I remember my father 
— a man of deep religion and nimble wit — say- 
ing to the priest who had just baptized me, '' It must 
have been in the blood." And the good Celtic 
parochus agreed laughingly, neither of them realiz- 
ing the profound truth of the remark. Nor did I 
realize it at the time, although there seemed so lit- 
tle strangeness in the step I was taking — so great 
a sense of familiarity, as of a pilgrim coming home 
to sunlight and firelight known long before. 

I had certainly had religious experiences; but I 
had never been seriously interested in religion until, 
quite without any intention of my own, I became 
interested in Catholicity. God alone knows when 
the first seed fell. It may have been hidden in some 
novels of the early Christian time — Kingsley's 

58 



KATHERINE C. BREGY 59 

" Hypatia " was, ironically enough, one of them, 
and '' Quo Vadis " was another — or it may have 
blown into the study of Florentine art, about which 
I was excessively keen for a while. But I had been 
used to a dignified, moderately '' high " Episcopal 
ritual. Theoretically, at least, the Church idea was 
not new to me. Then somehow — I cannot say 
whether it was through constantly passing a hos- 
pital of the Sisters of Charity, or through dipping 
into the Memoirs of Mme. Navarro, or through ac- 
cidentally hearing a description of the office of 
Tenebrae, — I woke up to the fact that this Church 
idea was still a vital force in the world. I was just 
a school-girl at the time : I had never been through 
a convent or' spoken to a priest in my life. But the 
immensity of the thought did certainly arrest me. 
That simple linking O'f past and present was so vivid, 
so majestic, so incredibly thrilling! I did not talk 
much about the subject (never being able to talk of 
deep things without a certainty of sympathy in the 
listeners), but I began to read. First it was every 
scrap of Catholic news in the daily papers, the maga- 
zines, the encyclopedias, — prolific sources, if dubi- 
ous! Then, like a thief in the night, I stole off to 
a little Catholic bookshop, where I happened very 
fortunately upon the Baltimore Catechism and 
Father di Bruno's '' Catholic Belief/' I was more 
interested in these than (even!) in the Shakesperian 
dramas in which I had immersed myself for months 
before. Considering my age, I think I was ab- 



6o BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

normally interested! I suspect I gave my first ro- 
mantic love to that venerable, tangible, mystical 
thing known as Catholicism. I had been accus- 
tomed to a very ''respectable'' religion: here I 
found sanctity and the seven deadly sins. I had 
been used to the compromises of Anglicanism: 
here I found one *'' speaking with authority, and not 
as the scribes." 

It was a great joy, this secret of mine: then, 
presently, I perceived that it was going to be a great 
pain. The pearl had its price, and I was not to be 
alone in paying for it. ]My family, as I have already 
hinted, possessed much Catholic blood: on my 
father's side a whole half-heritage from the French ; 
on my mother's a potent but less direct strain of the 
Irish. But there had been emigration — and mixed 
marriages — and a thoroughly Protestant upbring- 
ing: so that the generation before mine was not 
Catholic in any sense at all; except (as I like to 
think) in an inherited sense of devotion and rever- 
ence for authority. Consequently, when I refused 
to be confirmed in the Protestant Episcopal Church 
of my birth — giving as reason a strong attraction 
for the fuller faith of Rome — I drew the tradi- 
tional storm upon my head. It was quite electrical 
for a while. The family pastor, a pious but imprac- 
tical man, called upon me and talked vaguely about 
the '*' Forged Decretals." Other v/ell-meaning hands 
brought me books in which all the vile accusations 
of nineteen hundred years were gathered together 



KATHERINE C. BREGY 6l 

against the " Scarlet Woman.'' Well, I had read 
my New Testament rather attentively, and the 
charges sounded familiar. The Christ of Galilee 
and Jerusalem had been called seducer and liar and 
worldling and blasphemer, I seemed tO' remember; 
St. Peter was charged with tyranny and St. Paul 
had to defend himself against preaching that the 
end justified the means. These precedents com- 
forted me: but the real historic scandals of the 
Church did hurt me bitterly. I had to pray against 
these. I had to remember the apostles once again 
— and the pitiful earthen vessel which bore the 
Treasure age after age. It was a lesson I needed 
to learn : that everj^thing had happened before and 
might happen again ; and still Mother Church would 
travel on, clothed with the sanctity of God and the 
frailty oif man — infallible yet nowise impeccable — 
*' doing the King's work all the dim day long." To 
apprehend this early in the religious life saved me, 
I think, that sorry disease of " taking scandal " 
which so often afflicts the newly received. 

It was during those troubled days that I first be- 
gan to read Cardinal Newman — perhaps the strong- 
est literary influence of my life. His keenness of 
thought, his lucidity of form, his snow-white eleva- 
tion of soul enchanted me. I literally sat at the 
great Oratorian's feet for a year and a half, and 
while reading the Apologia I was as conscious of 
his personality as of any actual living friend. He 
made faith an intellectual rather than an emotional 



62 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

thing to me. He taught me conclusively that Cathol- 
icism was the true Church of the Past; and I stood 
quite ready to burn my bridges on the strength of 
" development " and Patristic testimonies. 

Then, for the first time, I came into contact with 
the Congregation of St. Paul. It happened that a 
young Paulist father (destined in after years to 
become one of my best and closest friends) was con- 
ducting a non-Catholic mission in my home parish, 
and I attended some few of the very popular, very 
practical, very " modern " lectures. I started a 
course of reading about Father Izaak Hecker and 
his apostolic dream of making America Catholic. 
Then I woke up to the fact that Catholicism was 
very much the Church of the Present, intensely pre- 
occupied with every problem of twentieth century 
life and thought. After that, there could be for 
me no further shadow of turning. I became not 
m.erely a partisan but a proselyte. 

There is small need to recall here all the painful 
steps of a journey bound to bring pain to pilgrims 
and bystanders as well. They were all good, I see 
now, since they helped me, like Paracelsus, to 
" prove my soul." Assuredly, they were not all 
wise in themselves. But after I had waited some 
five years — and incidentally had attained my con- 
ventional majority — I won my parent's consent to 
the great initial step. On the 27th of May, 1904, 
I made my profession of faith and was condition- 
ally baptized into the Holy Roman Catholic and 



/ 



KATHERINE C. BREGY 63 

Apostolic Church. Two days later I received my 
First Communion. From that Month of Mary I 
date the beginnings of my personal, independent ex- 
istence. I had slipped into my groove — '' reverted 
to type " if you will — and was ready to start out on 
the real matter of living. At the moment I suppose 
it did seem in some sense a consummation to me. 
Now I know that it was simply an initiation. I 
needed Catholicity, with her doctrines and her dis- 
cipline and her sacraments, in order to live fully. 
And I should like to record here that this is the only 
step of my entire life about which I have never had 
any subsequent misgiving. I have never, in mo- 
ments of the most searching introspection, questioned 
its wisdom. I could have said that fair spring day 
with Sydney Carton (and quite as truthfully) : '' It 
is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever 
done — It is a far, far better rest that I go to than 
I have ever known." 

A little time before I was formally received into 
the '' body " of the Church, the editor of the Catholic 
World (destined, also, to become a friend of incal- 
culable worth, although we were then unacquainted) 
had given the baptism of print to my first literary 
article, a little study of the martyr-poet, Robert 
Southwell. This, more than anything else, clinched 
my future vocation. For several years I had been 
browsing through literary fields at the University of 
Pennsylvania: I now decided to give my little best 
to the cause of Catholic literature. I entered upon 



64 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

the work with the'keenness of a hunter and the joy- 
ous audacity of youth. Criticism seemed to be my 
wisest metier — the criticism which Coleridge once 
defined as appreciation — and I made it my task to 
trace back the sunny thread of Catholic poetry 
through the so-called un-Catholic periods of English 
literature. There was rhyme enough, but assuredly 
no consecutive reason in my method. I drifted into 
stray studies of very different chronology, rejoicing 
mightily to celebrate some scarcely appreciated chor- 
ister — '' deterrer un beau vers dans un poete 
meconnu," as Theophile Gautier has it. I had at 
least the pleasure of proving to my own satisfaction 
how potently the note of Catholicity had prevailed, 
with all the powers of this world uniting to drown it. 
There was something almost cloistral in my life 
at that time. I lived among my poets and my saints, 
and found them all-sufficient. Aubrey de Vere has 
written somewhere with his deep and reverent vision 
that ''the history of a soul holds in it more than 
doth a nation's.'' I find myself wondering at times 
if the true heredity does not lie in this reproduction 
of race experiences: if the Christian soul does not 
relive, in little, the histor}' of Christendom? Many 
a convert (perhaps many a born Catholic, also, if he 
happen to have looked into the matter self-con- 
sciously) can point back to the primitive, evangelical 
age of the soul; to the strange awe and ardor of the 
Catacomb age; to the time of patristic metaphysic, 
the ordering and defining of religious ideas; to the 



KATHERINE C. BREGY 65 

"peace of the Church; " and so through the shuttle 
of the centuries. Everything, sainthood itself, 
seems probable to the young Catholic. He has su- 
perabundant zeal for good works and a secret desire 
for martyrdom. There is rapture and mystery still 
in all the functions of religion. But '' for a' that and 
a' that "he — or she — is often a very uncomforta- 
ble person to live with. " The ardor chills us which 
we do not share; " and the unconverted family has 
in truth something to bear from the newly-chrismed, 
who walks none too steadily nor serenely upon the 
burning streets of the New Jerusalem. Then comes 
the mellowing time, the adjustment and readjust- 
ment of ideas, the rounding of sharp corners, the 
gradual ceasing to be a convent. It was a priest 
(and one who had blithely consecrated his life to 
the mission crusade) who first pointed out this lack 
of humanness in my own viewpoint. He thought 
me superfluously abstract and impersonal; and he 
showed me, by example rather than precept, that if 
the supernatural life were to be a reality and not 
an illusion, it must be firmly grounded upon natural 
good. Years later, when I came upon those pro- 
found yet simple lines, 

" The low life shapes the higher : fire is struck 
By swords that beat upon the hearts of men/' 

they seemed to sum up this padre's message. He 
brought back to me the beauty of laughter, and of 
red blood, and of God's out-of-doors: may he reap 



66 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

a thousand fold in the sunshine of the Great Har- 
vesting ! 

I breathed a new sense of freedom after that. 
I felt, and found, that so far from crushing my 
modest individuality (as had been prophesied to 
me!), the Church was actually developing it. The 
few '* scruples '' I had acquired fell from me like 
useless gyves. I found it was not necessary to be 
** more Catholic than the Pope '' — nor more dis- 
creet than a father director ! There were '' only 
ten commandments of God and six precepts of the 
Church," as Robert Orange had sagely reflected. 
The much maligned Congregation of the Index was 
nowise concerned, I soon discovered, with restrict- 
ing my own poor reachings after art or scholar- 
ship : and a Jesuit confessor might actually encour- 
age liberty of spirit. Indeed, after some five years 
of most patient Jesuit direction, I should like to 
make public acknowledgment of the gentleness and 
restraint, the spiritual balance and urbanity which 
I have met in the tribunal of penance. That these 
have not borne better fruit I must put down to 
Original Sin, to the choking-up of worldly needs, 
and perhaps to a certain incorrigible volatility of 
temperament in myself. As a Catholic, naturally, 
I believe great things of the sacramental, spiritual 
efficacy of confession. But merely as an observer 
of life, I feel tempted to transpose the celebrated 
Gaelic epigram by declaring (with all reverence) 
that if God had left us no such sacrament, it would 



KATHERINE C. BREGY 67 

be necessary to invent one — not merely as a cor- 
rector of the natural man, but as a tranquilizer of 
the super-civilized woman! For most of us, con- 
fession reveals itself ere long as a goad, a curb and 
a steering-wheel. It is the best remedy conceivable 
against morbid introspection and what Fenelon has 
finely called ^' excruciating self-examinations." 

The only real advantage in being a convert is, 
I fancy, the necessity of knowing one's religion — ■ 
of not taking it, as we take most things, too much 
for granted. After that, it is well to acquire the 
old, mature, patient Catholic consciousness as 
quickly as possible. It is well to deal with broad 
horizons and to look at humanity as frankly and as 
fearlessly as may be. Personally, I have mingled 
with all sorts and conditions of Catholics: with 
saints and scholars and scrubwomen; souls tainted 
with profligacy and souls tainted with puritanism; 
with shepherds and kings and a handful of the high- 
souled magi. I have found in them at least vitality 
— a something tO' take hold of and to build upon — • 
and in proportion to the strength of this faith, a 
reality of Hfe which I had rarely met outside the 
Church. For the rest, it has been an unceasing 
wonder and delight to me to remember that God 
will '* have all men to be saved and to come into 
the knowledge of His truth " : that in a normal, 
unviolent ordering of the universe, all men should 
be, according to their capacity, children of Mother 
Church. 



68 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

Coventry Patmore was tremendously right — 
Christianity, or CathoHcity, is an experimental sci- 
ence ! One's reasons for firm and permanent faith 
are often quite different from the reasons of one's 
initial " submission." There is the Catholic sense 
or intuition to be acquired; and here, as elsewhere, 
abundant room will be found for the personal equa- 
tion. In the last analysis, the Church has defined 
so little — only the fundamental groundwork of 
unity, the scheme of salvation — only the essentials 
upon which to build a peaceful, progressive (not 
merely anarchic) spirituality. All the immense sig- 
nificance of the '^ corollaries of faith " are left to 
our own discovery: and doubtless each pilgrim at 
the great Inn will look out through a different win- 
dow. Perhaps, indeed, each one will look through 
many successive windows before, peradventure, the 
Beatific Vision is finally attained. I am aware in 
retrospect of many transitions in my own viewpoint. 
I came into the Church as an avowed medievalist. 
I not only appreciated, I probably exaggerated, the 
elemental poetry and reality of the Middle Age. 
Modern life seemed to me (as in a modified sense it 
still seems) a little gray and parched beside that 
germinal time of magnificent creativeness. I was 
disappointed because my confessors never seemed 
to approve o-f corporal penances; I was dismayed 
when a priest whose judgment I must needs respect 
spoke condescendingly of the Golden Legend. 
Then, at the urgency of another priest-friend, I 



KATHERINE C. BREGY 69 

began to ' read Pere Delahaye and other critical 
hagiographers and historians. I learned what I 
ought to have known long before about the " de- 
velopment of Christian doctrine ; " and I divined 
in each age growth, aspiration, in none the ultimate 
perfection of Catholic life. The Mind of the 
Church, brooding ever upon the unspeakable secrets 
of God, focussing, translating, teaching mankind 
century after century 

" how deep within the liturgies 
Lie hid the mysteries," 

loomed before me in newer and truer sublimity. 

I can never be too grateful that just when the 
critical temper was weakening my hold upon asceti- 
cism — or let us say, when certain negative ideals 
of ascetism which had been mine were beginning 
to seem barren — this new sense of mysticism 
should have come into my life. It was the poets 
who brought it to me: but I doubt not they had it 
by way of those other seers of the race, the saints. 
With Francis Thompson, with Alice Meynell, with 
Patmore and his " passionate reality of Catholic 
doctrine," I came to feel the eternal symbolism of 
human life. There is such a riot of cheap pseudo- 
mysticism in the world to-day that one hesitates to 
dilate upon the genuine article. One has grown 
just a little shy of the strange, deep troubling of the 
waters, the new transcendent reading of life which 
was familiar to St. Catherine of Genoa, to John 



70 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

of the Cross, to that '' fair sister of the seraphim," 
St. Teresa — and to many a humbler contemplative 
in all ages of the Church. To those of us who stand 
without, '' beggars at the porch of the glad palace " 
because, perchance, we fear the costly immolation 
of self-love and self-will conditional upon entering 
in, even to us come gleams of the vision. All the 
pageantry of the outer world, all the stress of hu- 
man emotion, become interpretative of divine, in- 
terior truths. We know that renunciation walks 
always before and beside possession : that by closing 
our eyes to the obvious and superficial, we shall in 
the end perceive in Thompson's splendid words, 
how all things, 

" near or far, 
Hiddenly to each other linked are, 
And thou canst not stir a flower 
Without troubhng a star." 

Nor is it possible to travel even thus far wnth the 
divine Initiated without acquiring a new and larger 
sense of ethics. We may lay what stress we like 
upon the elemental, moral value of Catholic truth. 
But above and beyond all this we have got to realize 
that religion is not merely utilitarian. As I wrote 
long ago, feeling strongly upon the subject: "Its 
ultimate aim is not simply to make men virtuous 
but to bring the soul into eternal union with its God. 
And so the simple merges and is lost in the sublime 
— the faith of stern, immediate practicality is 



KATHERINE C. BREGY 7 1 

shown to be the mother of ' fair love ' and of mys- 
ticism." 

It has been a voyage of discovery all along to 
me, this gradual journey in toward the heart of 
Catholicity. I have been debtor to many fellow pil- 
grims — to half a score of priests, and to one nun, 
a Third Order Dominican. She taught me much 
in the personal gift of her delicate sympathy: and 
she revealed to me the spirit of Catholic social work, 
the high and consecrated intention of it all, the su- 
pernatural charity which is of more ultimate value 
than a thousand cold efficiencies. She brought me 
also into an intimacy with many of the older spir- 
itual writers — with St. Dominic himself, with that 
serene saint and gracious gentleman, Frangois de 
Sales — and with such high-souled moderns as 
Mother Frances Raphael (Drane). 

Some five years after becoming a Catholic, I paid 
my first visit to the Old World I had long so pas- 
sionately loved. This again was very much like 
going home, and my citizenship in the Church Cath- 
olic proved in a new sense a citizenship of the 
World. More poignantly than ever was I aware of 
my kinship with the past. I felt it, kneeling at the 
tomb of Peter or gathering poppies along the Ap- 
pian Way. I felt it in the high seriousness of 
Oberammergau, in the beautiful, tragic triviality of 
Versailles, in the chateau-fort of my schooltime 
hero, Godfrey de Bouillon. In the mysterious 
gloom of Notre Dame de Paris it enveloped me — • 



y2 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

nor was it far away in the noble, outraged shrines 
of old Westminster. One memorable (and, of 
course, inevitable!) episode of the trip was my audi- 
ence with the gentle white father, Pius X. His 
greeting was, I fancy, all the more gracious because 
of the happy accident which had made me a convert ; 
for my literary w^ork and for '' mes bien aimes '' he 
gave me a special benediction which I shall prize 
over the brink of eternity. 

It is by breaking loose from harbor chains that the 
ship finds herself : and I take it that by travel, mental 
or physical, the character is most truly defined. I 
do not think I came back from those months in 
Europe a worse Catholic or a better one ; but there 
was indubitably some new^ quality in my religion 
and in my whole mental and spiritual viewpoint. 
For one thing, the ancestral note had been accentu- 
ated — I was less a convert than ever before. I had 
absorbed something of that curious toleration of the 
Romance nations, and something of their hunger 
after beauty. Beyond all this, a sense of the large- 
ness and fullness of life possessed me. One phase 
of this was an exhilarating, almost intoxicating de- 
light in the enormous heritage of culture which is, 
as it were, the birthright of every child of historic 
Christendom. To find Catholicity, then, means 
more even than to find religion: we may save the 
soul (if we can) and the mind, too, by her imme- 
morial wisdom! It is a heartening thing to feel 
that we reap not only where the martyrs have sown 



KATHERINE C BREGY • 73 

in blood but where the doctors have sown in brain — 
where Dante and Chaucer and the Troubadours 
have sung — where the Tuscans and Umbrians, the 
Spanish and Flemish have wrought their rainbow 
canvases — even where, century after century, the 
French have talked so exquisitely. It is an in- 
spiration, surely, to remember that the great uni- 
versities of Europe were as authentically our own as 
the great cathedrals; that under normal conditions 
Catholicity stands committed not to ignorance, not 
even to mediocrity, but to culture of the entire spirit. 
Obviously, we are dealing now with a side issue: 
it is not for the sake of Catholic culture that our 
sacrificial missionaries sleep upon desert sands. But 
none the less, it is a part of the divine spaciousness 
of Catholicity — a part of that large inclusiveness 
which is implied in the Communion of Saints. It 
has indelibly colored the Catholic ideal of life. It 
has given that mature yet youthful graciousness 
which Walter Pater (who possessed, I think, a very 
delicate insight into Catholic thought) found in St. 
Catherine of Siena, when he declared that she had 
achieved her '' undying place in the House Beauti- 
ful, not by her rectitude of soul only, but by its fair- 
ness." 

Now this, I take it, is the very keynote of the 
higher spirituality: not rectitude of soul only, but 
fairness : the tables of the Law indeed for a founda- 
tion, but above these all the soaring grace and in- 
tricacy of the Gothic cathedral. I recall once hear- 



74 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

ing a very suggestive and long- felt distinctions- 
it came from one of the most typical monks of re- 
cent times — to the effect that the Dominican ideal 
placed Truth as the highest Love, while the Francis- 
can placed Love as the highest Truth. He was, of 
course, reconciling the claims of emotion and intel- 
lect. But to many a modern soul (as to many an 
ancient) Beauty becomes, I think, the synthesis of 
this Truth and this Love ; and the beauty of holiness 
becomes the last word in religion. It is the leaven 
which permeates the whole mass of Christian life — 
the key to that wisdom which '' stretches from end to 
end mightily and orders all things sweetly." 

In this sense, Beauty is not merely a sensuous 
thing ; although certainly the sensuous side — the 
delight of color and music and form and movement 
— is not to be despised. Nor is it wholly an intel- 
lectual thing, nor absolutely a moral thing. It is 
an all-embracing sense of the harmony of life, reach- 
ing up to God as the primal Artist, the first and final 
source of " whatsoever things are lovely.'^ I do 
not hesitate to affirm that my own religion has be- 
come increasingly a worship of Beauty — and that 
Beauty seems to me the most satisfying synonym 
for God Himself. It may well be that some day, 
as I see further into the riches of Catholic faith, I 
may be led to a higher step. I do not speak in 
finalities : they are for the Builder of the Inn, scarcely 
for a pilgrim at its gate. And did not Newman 
long ago point out that, circumstanced as we are in 



KATHERINE C. BREGY 75 

this opaque and mutable world, '' to live is to change 
and to be perfect is to have changed often "? But 
now, in all failure, all un faith, in all that tragic thing 
which we call sin, I see discord — ugliness. But in 
Nature, Carlyle's mighty " garment of God " — in 
the sweetness of human joy and the sweetness of hu- 
man sorrow borne bravely — in the supreme person- 
ality, so much more fair than our dreams, so much 
more real than ourselves, of the divine yet human 
Christ — in the Church which He bequeathed as the 
most harmonious and inspiring organism of this 
world — • in her august, symbolic ceremonies, in her 
uplif tings of prayer, in the Sacraments whereby we 
commune, in mystic channels of unguessed intimacy, 
with the divine Source of all perfectness — in all 
these I seem to discern " through the lamp. Beauty, 
the light, God." 1 

^ Francis Thompson : Shelley, 



ANNA E. BUCHANAN, 

TEMPLE, TEXAS. 

Lineal descendant of Blessed Thomas More, Lord Chancellor 
of England and martyr under King Henry the Eighth. 

Is it not enough to convince the most skeptical 
member of the Church of England of the claims of 
the Church, to be assured by one who was with them 
from babyhood for forty years that she has never 
regretted the step that made her a CathoHc; but on 
the contrary finds it impossible to express the grati- 
tude she feels towards those who helped her to reach 
the haven of rest and peace. It certainly makes a 
convert feel intensely humble to think of such in- 
finite mercy and condescending love on the part of 
the Good Shepherd Who, before giving His life for 
the sheep, linked them to the loving solicitude of the 
Church triumphant, thus verifying His promise : '' I 
will not leave you orphans." When I look back 
and realize how long I was an orphan, I can only 
exclaim with St. Augustine, " Too late have I known 
Thee, O Thou ancient truth ! " 

Love for the Holy Eucharist is surely an irresisti- 
ble magnet to draw any one who desires to love 
Our Lord more and more to the one Church, and 
the difference in administering the Blessed Sacra- 

76 



ANNA E. BUCHANAN "j^ 

ment in the Church of England must ever be a cause 
of pain to the AngHcan who' has the true CathoHc 
instinct about the Divine Presence. Looking back 
now, after so many years, I feel this more and more. 

One day I was walking with a friend, who was 
also a convert, in a town in Arkansas, when we 
passed an Episcopal church : " Why, they are sing- 
ing the Gloria," remarked my friend, *' let us go in 
and listen to them." We went into the porch and 
listened to the old, old tune in which we had so often 
joined, then we peeped in at the four bare walls — 
the chants were being practiced for Sunday — and 
after this we stepped down into the street in silent 
sorrow — both of us in tears. How many thoughts 
forced themselves upon us and how we longed to 
call that choir away out of the cold into the warm 
light of truth — not only the choir, but all who wor- 
shiped there, who loved what we had loved, and 
prayed as we had prayed, and who yet were still 
groping in darkness. 

While I was still living in England, a lady I knew, 
an East Grinsted devotee, acknowledged to me that 
it was her duty to join the Roman Catholic Church 
as she believed all that it taught. She went so far 
as to promise to do this and after staying with me 
for a few days she left to go and tell her sister of her 
intention. In the course of a week, however, after 
wondering at her silence, I received a note telling me 
that she had changed her mind and decided to stay 
where she was. Her letter went on to say that after 



78 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

she had left me, she went to London to see " Father 

N /' the rector of a RituaHstic church. He 

very soon divested Mrs. A of all desire to place 

her feet upon the Rock of Peter, telling her how 
she was needed in her own '' Catholic church " and 
of the great danger of seceding from their faith, 
etc., etc. She died a few years afterwards and her 
sister, who was also one of Father N 's con- 
gregation, wrote to a Catholic priest whom I knew 
well to ask him to have a Requiem Mass sung for 
her in our church ! Such are the contradictions of 
Anglicanism. 

How the devil hates the Church! If some of our 
good people outside could find this out as we do, and 
think well over it, surely they would be led to ask a 
few questions as tO' the arch-enemy's reasons for 
this pursuant hatred. We need hardly say that souls 
who enter the Church flee from the serpent, there- 
fore their gain is his loss. Once across the border 
the pilgrim finds a mighty array of helps on the re- 
mainder of the road to Heaven ! The enemy resorts 
to many a ruse to draw converts off the right path. 
Sometimes he tempts them to be over-scrupulous; 
he raises strange obstacles to duty or tempts a con- 
vert to be unduly anxious about fulfilling it ; thus, he 
tries to mar the peace which they inherit who be- 
come children of the Church. Such are some of the 
difficulties of a neophyte ! 

When an old lady, a relative, heard that I had 
left her church, she said to me — " You have done 



ANNA E. BUCHANAN 79 

quite right, but — I am not going to follow." She 
hesitated as she said this and smiled, but it was clear 
that her conscience was not altogether at ease. Well 
may we beg the Good Shepherd for more and more 
light for those " other sheep '' who are wandering 
away from the fold uncertain as to the road that 
will bring them to His earthly Dwelling-place — 
Domus Mea. 

A short time before my conversion I went one 
Sunday to a very High Church in a suburb of Lon- 
don where the rector (who had recently been im- 
prisoned for his ritualism) preached in his Alb with 
his Stole crossed over his breast. His text hap- 
pened to be, '' O send forth Thy light and Thy 
truth that they may lead me to Thy Holy Hill and 
to Thy Dwelling!" I have often wondered how 
many of the congregation listened to those words, 
took them to heart and pondered over them as I 
found myself doing! Were we, then, in darkness 
that we must ask for the light? Yes — that was 
clear — a sermon asking for light and truth could 
leave but one impression. 

Need a convert say in conclusion, that the peace 
and joy of life in the one true Church of Christ on 
earth, can only be compared to a foretaste of the 
more perfect life in Heaven; and the secret of this 
is the ever-abiding Presence of our Divine Lord and 
Saviour, according to His promise, " I will not leave 
you orphans," which promise also makes us owe 
with the Church Triumphant. Surely Heaven and 



So BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

earth meet during the " mystic Sacrifice and every 
festival heralds a further advance of the One True 
Fold so dearly purchased by our Divine Redeemer's 
Precious Blood." 



EMMA FORBES GARY, 

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 
(Sister-in-law of Professor Agassiz.) 

I believe my little narrative in '' Some Roads to 
Rome/' left me at the age of twenty-two, very 
happy in my conversion. Now I am asked to tell 
the story of fifty-seven years spent in the Church; 
no easy task, one would think, but perhaps not so 
difficult after all. 

I have suffered nothing for the Church, and she 
has given me everything. I never consciously lost 
a friend or acquaintance by becoming a Catholic. 
My family took me, as it were, under their especial 
care and, if an ignorant or unkind remark was made 
about the Church, some one would say, '' We have a 
Catholic among us and we never say such things," 
or words to that effect. 

Though I have lived chiefly with Protestants, my 
active work has been exclusively among Catholics. 
'' You were sent to the lost sheep o^f the House of 
Israel," a priest said kindly to me, when I bewailed 
the fact that I made no converts. Though I 
worked much with Protestants in social work, it 
was in the direct interest of Catholics that I used 
my energies. It is easy to work with Protestants 



82 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

if one stands squarely as a Catholic. The hier- 
archy in Holland say to the Dutch Catholics who 
unite their forces to those of Anti-Revolutionary 
Protestants, ^^ March separately, but fight shoulder 
to shoulder," advice which applies to such social 
work in this country as demands combined action 
of Protestants and Catholics. 

The natural, or rather the supernatural, result of 
a half century spent in the Church is this: The 
soul grows closer and closer to the heart of the 
Church; finds an ever widening enjoyment of Her 
treasures, intellectual and spiritual; and learns to 
refill the narrowing circle of human interests with 
new and invigorating friendships. 

The great convert, St. Augustine, says : ^' Give 
me a lover and he will catch my meaning; give me 
one full of longing; give me an hungerer, give me 
a wanderer in this desert, athirst and gasping for 
the fountains of the eternal Fatherland. Give me 
such a one and he will catch my meaning." The 
promises of the Church are the first rays of dawn; 
their fulfillment is the noontide splendor. 



THE REV. B. STUART CHAMBERS, D.D., 

CHURCH OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT, 
NEW YORK, N. Y. 

It is Mr. Chesterton, and I hesitate in adding 
to the literary epidemic of quoting his too clever 
parado'xes, who said: " In everything on this earth 
that is worth doing, there is a stage when no one 
would do- it, except for necessity or honor," . . . 
'' the success of the marriage comes after the failure 
of the honeymoon.'' 

To say that every real convert toi the Church of 
the Living God, above all, one who also espouses 
God's divinely instituted priesthood, does not ex- 
perience in the beginning a kind of spiritual honey- 
moon, would be to deny the spiritual reality of the 
call (vocatio) itself, with its interior tasting and 
seeing that the Lord is sweet. To claim that this 
period of first love, of first soulfulness and sweet- 
ness lasts forever, would be to deny the mutability 
and varying moods O'f human nature on the one 
hand and the infinite though hidden wisdom of 
God's responsive grace on the other ; — always, '' the 
Spirit bloweth where it listeth." The king- 
dom of heaven, within no less than without us, 
has its time of plenty and its time of famine, so 

83 



84 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

every earnest Christian, above alL even.* convert 
to Catholic Christianity, because something of a 
reactionist, must have a moral digestion for all 
kinds of food, varying both in quantity and quality, 
from the most delicious and celestial sweets down 
to the driest and most tasteless of earthly sawdust. 
It may be the convert especially, after the failure 
of his ecclesiastical honeymoon, who enjoys the 
success of withstanding may a household infelicity, 
many a '' mauvais quart d'heure,'' which seems to 
last a long time, too; the success of surviving dis- 
enchantment, disappointment, not with Catholicity 
(God forbid!), but with Catholics, most of all with 
himself. 

Than all of which nothing could be more provi- 
dential and educative in the knowledge of one's self 
and of one's neighbor, nothing more strengthening 
in the growth of one's faith in God. 

Were it not, strictly speaking, bad philosophy, 
I could repeat to-day with more sobriety if less en- 
thusiasm, what I said when I felt the quickening 
thrill of my First Communion about eighteen years 
ago : '' I should rather not to have been at all than 
never to have become a Catholic." 



MARGARET TERRY CHANLER, 

GENESEO, NEW YORK. 

Wife of Winthrop Chanler, and sister of the late F. Marion 
Crawford. 

It is easier to put down in words how the treasure 
was found than to give an account of our steward- 
ship of it. In the first instance there is some cause 
for self -congratulation; how wise, how prudent it 
was to see the light and to follow it ; to discover the 
pearl of great price and take possession of it; to 
knock at the gate of life and have it open to us. 
(And all the time we know that, but for the grace 
of God, we would neither have seen nor heard — 
have neither found nor been admitted.) But now 
— the long, long years that have passed, and the 
little progress made; how explain, why with such 
opportunity we have not done better? 

For most of us the spiritual life is truly a wan- 
dering in the wilderness. When we are walking in 
the pleasant daylight of earthly prosperity religion 
IS, as it were, a '^ cloud unknowing." We turn to 
it to rest our souls from the glare and glitter of the 
material world. When the night of sorrow and be- 
reavement closes in on us, it becomes a beacon pillar 
of fire ; we cannot measure the distances over which 
it leads us. The weakness of our will, the diffi- 

85 



86 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

culties of the road, the blindness of our hearts, 
measure if you can all these, and the inscrutable 
ways of God with the soul, and you may better un- 
derstand why there is not more to show for the long 
years of opportunity. 

It is thirty years since I was received into the 
Church; I took the step with faith and simplicity, 
feeling : '' Where else shall we go ? Thou hast the 
words of eternal life;" having, indeed, always felt 
drawn to it, brought up as I was in the shadow of 
the Roman basilicas. But as I look back, and think 
of all the joy and comfort, the help and salvation 
I have found, the undreamed-of treasures of life 
and strength, I realize how little I then understood 
what honor had come to my house. 

All we can say seems so inadequate, when 
prophets, doctors, martyrs, confessors and virgins 
have always and everywhere said it before, and 
lived it, sealing their faith with holy life and glori- 
ous death. The beloved cloud of witnesses who 
have gone on before us, in whose communion we 
live. I find it hard to come down to my particular 
case because it is of so little importance to anyone 
but myself. Yet, if an affirmation is required, a 
reiteration of my profession, I can say with truth, 
every month, and week, and day that passes finds 
me and leaves me more profoundly convinced, more 
deeply satisfied as a Catholic. 

All the world of sense and thought, all history, 
art, poetry and philosophy radiate to me ever more 



MARGARET TERRY CHANLER 87 

dearly from the great central fact that God made 
man to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him; 
that He gave us freedom of soul to obey Him, 
whom to serve is perfect freedom; that He estab- 
lished His Church for our great comfort in this 
life, and our salvation in the next; and that in it, 
and through its ministrations, '' all that we are, all 
that we have. He takes; all that He is, all that He 
has, He gives." 

The dogma and the ritual of the Church seem to 
me every day more beautiful and rich with venerable 
significance ; more like a wonderful vessel of gold, set 
about with precious stones, mysteriously, ineffably 
wrought and perfected through the centuries, rep- 
resenting the highest gifts of the human mind in- 
formed by the divine ; its purpose to contain and to 
transmit the treasure of treasures: grace, salvation, 
the Eternal Word. 

How manifest this is in the Mass, for instance, 
where the whole structure and action lead up, with 
gradual increase of tension and importance, from 
the psalm, '' Introibo ad altare Dei," an aspiration 
and resolution uttered by the priest before he as- 
cends the altar steps, while he yet stands on the 
same level with the congregation, which he in fact 
recites alternately with the acolyte who represents 
the congregation, to the great Eucharistic prayer 
where all the universe ^' cum angelis et arch-angelis '* 
is called to witness and take part in the ineffable 
mystery of the consecration and communion. This 



88 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

surely is the center and burning point of all re- 
ligious life, of the Church's hfe as well as of our 
own: God giving Himself to us as He eternally 
IS, allowing us to approach Him in our feebleness, 
to receive and understand Him after the measure of 
our nescience and nonentity. Filling our souls — 
those that are empty of self — wath good things, 
sending the rich away empty because they could not 
make room in their hearts for His great gift. 

Catholicism seems far more transmissible than 
any other form of Christianity. Compare the va- 
rieties and fluctuations of Protestant sects and con- 
gregations with the stability and universality of the 
Roman confession. It is visible, too, in countless 
smaller and more intimate cases. Do we not recall 
instances, non-Catholic saints of tenderest memory, 
devoted Mothers who found help and strength in 
one of the many forms of Protestant worship a 
generation ago, whose children have all gone other 
ways? Some, perhaps, stagnating in shallow in- 
difference; others wandering into paths of experi- 
mental novelties in religion; some fortunate ones 
perhaps finding their way into the true fold. This is 
what happened in my own family. All we of my 
generation were convinced O'f the faultless beauty 
and holiness of my mother's life. To none of us 
did she transmit her wistful High Church Episco- 
palianism; she would not call it Protestantism; we 
knew it was not Catholicism; and somehow for all 



MARGARET TERRY CHANLER 89 

her faith and good will she could not make it live 
for us. I seem to hear someone object: all children 
of Catholic parents, even of very devout ones, do 
not preserve their faith. Far from it, and a pity 
'tis 'tis true; but you seldom find them following 
after strange gods. You will not see them stray 
into Christian Science temples, nor become pious 
Methodists or decorous Episcopalians. They may 
neglect, interrupt, finally lose their spiritual life al- 
together; but if the moment comes when they wish 
to revive it, to rekindle the flame, they will remem- 
ber where the lamp burns day and night before the 
Holy of Holies, where forgiveness wipes away all 
stain, where the Best of All can be had for the ask- 
ing. No other fire will warm them to life, no other 
Presence will be real, no lesser gift will satisfy them. 
Of my own children I can say truly and thank- 
fully that they all go to church with willing feet. 
I cannot but feel it is the very Truth which draws 
and holds them; the beauty and vital significance 
of our services which interest and satisfy them, 
which make religion the great central fact of their 
lives ; I have had to tell them so little and they have 
understood so much ; ANIMAE NATURALITER 
CHRISTIANAE that they are, growing and pros- 
pering in the good soil of God's vineyard. May 
He bless and keep them, may they persevere in the 
faith, which, but for my conversion, they would 
have been left to discover for themselves. I can 
bequeath to them no greater treasure* 



CARYL COLEMAN, 

PELHAM MANOR, NEW YORK. 

Ecclesiologist ; Church glass maker and decorator ; Educator, 

Author. 

As my life has been largely taken up with the 
promotion of the fine and decorative arts, many of 
my non-Catholic friends believe I must have been 
greatly disappointed with the Catholic Church, 
holding as they do that the Church of to-day, more 
especially in America, is not only indifferent to good 
art, but the little so-called art that it has is very bad. 
In this way they are in a way doubly mistaken. 
First: I recognized, when I was received into the 
Church, that good art or bad art is a matter of no 
moment in connection with the Faith, that in no way 
is it a mark of the true Church or is it essential to 
it or an inherent part of it, merely an instrument in 
its hands, to be used or not used, as the exigencies 
of the case or people or times may demand. Sec- 
ond: The Church in truth is to-day no more indif- 
ferent to good art than any other of the various 
ecclesiastical bodies, and not nearly as much so as 
the world at large, for it is plain to be seen that in 
this utilitarian and commercial age of ours there is 
very little place or love for art, except as a fad or 

90 



CARYL COLEMAN 9 1 

to glorify the arrogance of wealth or as a cultured 
manifestation of a sensuous materialism. 

Good ecclesiastical art wherever it may be found 
to-day is not an outcome of a school, a living 
breathing artistic force in the religious world, but 
merely an expression of an individual love or an ac- 
cident or more often a slavish imitation of the past 

— a copy of a perfect work of art of bygone days 

— never an original creation actuated by a love of 
God or even a development of a sacred motive. 
After all what matters it? What has art intrin- 
sically to do with the propagation O'f the Faith, with 
Christian perfection and the keeping of the Ten 
Commandments? Why should it? 

It is obvious, although the obvious is the one 
thing the student often misses, but in this case the 
most superficial observer cannot help realizing that 
the sole reason for the existence o-f the Church and 
its mission to mankind is the salvation of souls; 
and hence it logically follows, as a matter of course, 
that it is the right and duty of the Church to employ 
every honest means as instruments in obtaining the 
object of its being. History confirms this by re- 
cording the fact that the Church in all ages has so 
employed to that end every human endeavor : learn- 
ing, literature, music, art and architecture, or what 
you will. History also records that at times the 
use of these instruments has been abused, and in 
a way it is a warning; for some of the servants of 
Holy Church, forgetting its mission and their duty, 



92 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

have, for example, used art for art's sake, and al- 
ways more for their own gratification, the satisfy- 
ing of their tastes as vohiptuaries or for personal 
aggrandizement, than for the honor and glory of 
God. In this way in the course of time many mere 
instruments were so exalted that they became para- 
mount ; so much so, that some onlookers, even within 
the Fold, have mistakenly deemed them essential 
to the existence of Christian worship. Again his- 
tory records that among the Saints, with the single 
exception of learning, none of these instruments 
have played an important part in the drama of their 
personal holiness or in their promotion of the sanc- 
tification of others, or in the propagation of the 
Faith. 

Among the various instruments none are more 
non-essential than the decorative and pictorial arts, 
for what m_atters it whether or not the Eucharistic 
Sacrifice, the highest act of Christian worship, is 
celebrated under the dome of a magnificent cathe- 
dral, a triumph of architecture, or under the hum- 
ble roof of a poor man's house, so long as it is of- 
fered? What matters it whether or not the cele- 
brant is vested in cloth-of-gold or the cheapest of 
garments, so long as he consecrates? What mat- 
ters it whether or not the faithful receive the Body 
and Blood of Christ amid artistic environments, 
music, flovN'ers, incense : in company with the edu- 
cated and refined, or on the other hand, surrounded 
by the commonplace and the inartistic; cheek by 



CARYL COLEMAN 93 

jowl with the ignorant, the poor and lowly, even 
with the outcasts of society, so long as they receive 
the Bread of Life with loving, believing and con- 
trite hearts? The Mass is the one thing of conse- 
quence, everything else is merely accessory, having 
no intrinsic value. 

While I quite concur m the dictum of the poet 
that a thing of beauty is a joy forever, more partic- 
ularly in its highest sense, nevertheless, it has al- 
ways given me, since I have been a Catholic, a 
greater joy to see a parochial school built, than to 
see a costly church erected and highly embellished 
with elaborate marble altars, expensive stained- 
glass-picture windows and ornate mural decorations, 
•and all because the parochial schools are laying the 
foundation of the Faith so deeply within the souls 
of our children that their future, and the future of 
the Church, is assured. 

The Church, heretofore, in the United States, has 
been too busy doing its work of saving souls, to 
give any appreciable time or thought to art, or to af- 
fairs other than preaching Christ crucified, adminis- 
tering the Sacraments, rescuing the fallen, caring 
for the poor, the sick and the infirm, the widow and 
the orphan, instructing the ignorant and educating 
the children. In consequence of this most of its 
churches are little better, from an artistic point of 
view, than meeting houses. There is now, how- 
ever, a great change taking place, a church-build- 
ing era on higher lines has come into being, a state 



94 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

of affairs brought about by a growing love of the 
beautiful, by a constantly increasing devotion to 
the Faith, by the enlargement and extension of cul- 
ture and wealth among the faithful. The edifices 
of the past are no longer good enough or churchly 
enough or architecturally fine enough to satisfy the 
Catholic people. Just what may come of this 
movement, from an artistic point of view, I will 
not attempt to prognosticate, only to hope, from the 
general demand both in town and country for the 
best, that Christian art will be born again and the 
land covered with beautiful churches. 



JOSEPH E. COLTON, 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 

President Catholic Converts' League of the District of Co- 
lumbia. 

To count all the mental steps that marked the 
ascent from out of the mist to the mountain top; 
to trace each step of the way upward from doubt 
to certainty, is happily something that is not re- 
quired of me. It is enough to say that I was 
guided by an invisible hand to enter the way that 
led to the sublime verities, to that height where the 
vision was clear. Brought up by pious parents in 
the tenets of the Methodist Church, I have been a 
Catholic for almost twenty years. Familiar both 
before and after my conversion with the creeds of 
all the Protestant churches, I read much in my non- 
Catholic days of the writings of men who have at- 
tacked Christianity through the ages; then I read 
the vast tomes penned by Catholic scholars. But in 
my case it has been chiefly the study of mankind 
at close range that has convinced me of the divine 
claim of the Catholic Church, and especially I de- 
sire to bear witness to the influence, and beauty of 
character, of the splendid Catholic women I have 
known. Since I entered the Church I have been 

95 



96 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

brought into companionship with some beautiful 
souls, both in the world, and in the cloister. I saw 
what Mother Church did for those around me, 
building day by day characters that had in them an 
aroma of saintliness, and I was convinced that the 
faith which could produce such loveliness of daily 
living must be the true one. 

And thus, to sum up, it was first the spirit of the 
Lord that went before me into the wilderness to that 
land which, when I reached it, proved to be, instead 
of a wilderness, a garden of delicate bloom, fair 
W'ith the faith of the ages, clear shining after the 
outer darkness because of the beautiful lives of the 
Catholic men and women that I have happily known. 

These are the factors that have gemmed my path- 
way since I reached the road beyond; that road 
which opened before me a vista that reaches to 
heaven. 



CHARLES CARROLL COPELAND, 

LIBERTYVILLE, ILLINOIS. 

Retired lawyer; Philanthropist; Prohibitionist; Organizer of 
the Hibernian Bank of Chicago. 

Before I became a Catholic I had never been 
baptized, but I chanced to hear Moody and became 
interested in his work; for two years I taught Sun- 
day School in North Market Hall, Chicago. Then 
Moody wanted me to '' profess '' and because I re- 
fused he drove me out. 

After that I read the Old and New Testaments, 
and tried to prove Christ a myth, but gradually my 
point of view changed. I came to the conclusion 
that Christ was God, and that I would follow Him. 
At that time my independence was so great that I 
was impatient of all restraint. Only the compelling 
power of the Word of God, as I read my Bible day 
after day, led me to see that Christ had certainly 
established a Church, and that that Church was 
founded upon a rock. 

But where was I to find it? The sects did not 
any longer attract me; for historically they were of 
human origin. About this time I spoke to a friend 
of mine, a lawyer, but not then a member of any 

97 



98 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

church. He asked me if I had considered the claims 
of the Cathohc Church. I drew back startled; was 
she not the abomination of abominations, surely she 
could not possibly be the Church of the humble and 
lowly Jesus whom I had learned to love ! Then my 
friend advised me to see the Jesuits, which was 
worse still. But because I knew of nothing better 
to do, I finally decided to give them — what is al- 
ways given to the opposing side in a court of law — 
the chance to state their claim, and so — I went to 
see them. I was twenty-five years old then, full of 
my career as a successful lawyer, and because they 
explained to me the claims of the Catholic Church ; 
its dogmas, its sacraments, its institutions, its foun- 
dation, its Catholicity, its work in the world, and 
its influence on the human race, in a manner that I 
had never heard before — with a sincerity, a sim- 
plicity and yet a brilliance of exact definition — I 
was attracted, spellbound, and finally convinced. 
Never in any court of law had I heard a better de- 
fense of a cause; and in this case the "cause" 
stated concerned the eternal salvation of my soul. 

So in due time I was baptized, feehng that the 
inspiration of God had brought me to the Catholic 
Church. That was fifty years ago; and half a cen- 
tury of contact with the Catholic Church as one of 
her devoted sons has oniy deepened my love and 
loyalty to her. 

But it is not enoiigh to speak in general terms. 
I am asked to give some of the reasons for my faith, 



CHARLES CARROLL COPELAND 99 

and my certainty that I made no mistake when I 
took that most momentO'US step of my life. Firstly, 
then, fifty years of active work in the Lord's Vine- 
yard, of an intimate experience of its temporal 
needs — needs that I have tried to meet and assist ; 
and of the spiritual treasures that she in turn gives 
us, is no bad test of truth. 

Then, secondly, when I became a Catholic, I de- 
termined to " hear the Church," to give all for all, 
as a Kempis says. As a practicing lawyer, with a 
lawyer's love for exactitude, for system, for logic; 
and with the knowledge that all law must have a 
Supreme Court, a final bar of appeal, I was struck 
by the fact that all this — in a spiritual and temporal 
sense — I had found in the Church. Her exact 
definition of truth delighted me, her logic seemed to 
me unanswerable; the Supreme Court has its Chief 
Justice, ancient Rome had its Pontifex Maximus, 
why then should not the Church of God, according 
to the grant made to blessed Peter, have its Supreme 
Head, by means of which outward unity is pre- 
served ? 

I entered on my new path with a thankful heart, 
and remembering the story of the rich young man, 
and that Faith without works is void, I determined 
to give up my fortune as well as my life to the cry- 
ing temporal and spiritual needs of the Church. 
And therein I have learned a hundred times over all 
that it means to be in the Catholic Church: it has 
become so wonderful to me that none but God could 



lOO BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

have made it. How marvellous its foundation, its 
origin; its fulfillment of all God's prophecies, its 
survival of persecutions, its conversions, its coop- 
erative institutions of men and women for teaching, 
and the carrying out of its divine works of charity ! 
Would not the world be barbarian or savage now, 
or else intellectually heathen, if it were not for the 
Catholic Church ? In this Church, unlike the Prot- 
estant Churches, no man " assumes to administer 
the truth for any other man/' If he did, he would 
be silenced'. Its teachers teach what the Church 
teaches; and the Church Christ said He would lead 
into all truth. 

Again I repeat, it is this marvellous exactitude, 
this wonderful teaching power of the Church, that 
appealed to my legal mind. If a non-Catholic 
wishes to argue the question of the Roman claims, 
the answers he gets are as clear and definite as the 
explanation of some process of law. There is no 
doubt, no uncertainty, Deo Gratias! 



THE REV. JOHN E. COPUS, 

MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY, MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN. 
Priest of the Society of Jesus; Author; Dramatist. 

It IS rather difficult to write of one's intimate ex- 
periences after reception intO' the Church of God, 
and I would not comply with the request were it 
not for the fact that such experiences are calculated 
to encourage others, and to dispel a fear in those 
who are looking longingly, yet timorously, towards 
the City of Peace, and have been told that all is not 
well therein — that the glamour and enchantment 
as seen from without turns to dust and ashes and 
bitter disappointment with those who become con- 
verts. 

All this is not true. There are no dust and ashes 
of disillusionment. Such a statement is a cruel and 
bitter falsehood. There is peace in the City of 
Peace for those who seek it — a peace, a joy, a sat- 
isfaction which, I firmly believe, passes all compre- 
hension of those outside, and even of those who in 
faith are to the manor bom. 

Post-conversion impressions which are over a 
third of a century old are of little importance now. 
The spiritual exaltation and consolation — that 
early specific kind — have long since passed away 

lOI 



I02 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

with me, and in their place has come a habit, a 
perennial condition, founded on the Sacraments, as 
over three decades have waxed and waned. 

It is far from my intention to make any public 
manifestation of conscience. As I understand the 
request, this is not required, and would be refused 
if it were. I wish merely to give, for the benefit 
of those now within the penumbra of faith, an ac- 
count of the mental condition of a convert of the 
standing of a generation. 

Have I had any difficulties in nearly forty years 
of Catholic life? Many. Doubts? Absolutely 
none. With regard to the latter I think I can use 
a quotation of Brownson which admirably suits the 
case : 

" I have never in a single instance found an arti- 
cle, dogma, proposition, or definition of faith which 
embarrassed me as a logician, or which I would, so 
far as my own reason is concerned, have changed or 
modified, or in any way altered from what I found 
it, even if I had been free to do so. I have never 
found my reason struggling against the teachings of 
the Church, or felt it restrained, or myself reduced 
to. a state of mental slavery. I have, as a Catholic, 
felt and enjoyed a mental freedom which I never 
conceived possible while I was a non-Catholic." 

If I had no doubts as to the absolute solidity and 
immovability of the Church's position, whence arose 
the difficulties which I have admitted ? 

An implicit act of faith in the Ecclesia Docem 



i 



REV. JOHN E. COPUS 103 

does not imply full knowledge. Hence arose, in 
the earlier years, many a difficulty, which philosophy 
and theology and that unexplainable thing called 
Catholic instinct, adequately solved. 

Looking backward I can now see that many of 
the difficulties I encountered arose from the neces- 
sity of unlearning many things, and of acquiring 
the Catholic viewpoint — the CathoHc way of look- 
ing at things. This may sound a little strange to 
those of Catholic blood and tradition, but the con- 
vert will understand. It took several years before 
I completely discarded many little unessential men- 
tal attitudes that were not generated of the instinct 
of Catholicity, but were rather the products of a 
non-Catholic upbringing. I am by no means sure 
that I make myself clear — nevertheless, these wxre 
the difficulties spoken of above. The discarding of 
certain mental attitudes was not infrequently ac- 
companied with indignation after having found my- 
self the subject of so many erroneous impressions 
as to trifling details to which I had been taught to 
attach undue importance. In other words, in the 
past I had strained at the gnat and swallowed the 
camel, and for years it was difficult to get over the 
camel swallowing habit. 

The reader must not think that during all this 
period of unlearning there did not exist the nic\^t 
perfect sense of security, and a perennial and most 
extraordinary joy in the never ceasing, never fail- 
ing, adamantine authority of the Church. 



I04 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

I desire to add my quota toward helping to de- 
stroy any malign influence that makes some search- 
ers after Truth afraid to take the final step. In my 
thirty-seven years of Catholic life I have heard many 
times from those prejudiced against the Church that 
converts, after having taken the final step, have been 
unhappy and discontented, and are held in thrall, 
with no longer any chance of escaping from the 
clutches of Rome. 

There never was a greater calumny against the 
Church of God. It is not true that converts, or 
anybody else, are held in mental slavery. There is 
a vast difference between being compelled to act ac- 
cording to the dictates of an enlightened and il- 
luminated conscience, and the mental slavery which 
implies tyranny and terrorism. There is no tyranny 
in the Church of God, but rather light and love and 
gentle leading. This is abundantly verified by the 
soul's most intimate experience in the whispered 
colloquy in the confessional, which, unfortunately 
for the non-Catholic, is inherent to the Church, and 
consequently cannot be enjoyed by one until he is 
safely within the bosom of the Church. 

It is true that intellectual pride, or a life given 
over to the lower nature of man, may so blind and 
cloud one's faith that it may eventually be lost. But 
this is man's individual act, and not the work of the 
Church. She grieves thereat and rejoicingly takes 
the recalcitrant back to her bosom upon sign of his 
repentance. 



REV. JOHN E. COPUS 105 

If these maligners of the happiness of converts 
say they are bound under severe penalties — the 
pain of mortal sin and danger of eternal loss — un- 
less they do or omit certain things which being done 
or omitted accrue to the individual's gain — this can- 
not logically be called oppression. Every human in- 
stitution has, and enforces, its laws and obligations 
upon the individual, and if the individual does not 
comply with the requirements he expels himself 
automatically, and deprives himself of the benefits 
of the institution of which he was, at least, an un- 
desirable member. The Catholic Church, by the 
very essence of her being, cannot, and will not, tol- 
erate insuboirdination, and, consequently, must re- 
pudiate individual private opinion in matters of 
faith. She is armed with the mandate, '' Go and 
Teach," and there is the logical implication of ac- 
ceptance of those who are taught. If non-Catholics 
would grasp the logic of this situation, there would 
be many more converts than there are. 

All this is not tyranny, but is founded on the first 
principles of self-preservation. She holds no one 
in bondage, and those who miserably depart from 
her do so upon their o-wn initiative, and are sorrow- 
ingly allowed to do so by a mother who yearns for 
their salvation and return. Her consolation is, 
however, that the proportion of those who go to 
those who come and remain is infinitesimal. 

Non-Cathohcs do not, and cannot, realize the love 
and loyalty and the intense feeling of safety that 



Io6 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

ever increases in the breast of the convert. In the 
Church there is no duress. A small percentage O'f 
converts may have strayed out of the fold, and have 
been submerged in the bog-lands of doubt and error 
(and incidentally made much of by some not far- 
sighted denomination). But these miserable cases 
only prove the falseness of the assertion that con- 
verts are held in a sort of captivity. They would 
not, because they could not, what we call apostatize, 
if they were held in any kind of bondage, whether 
it be mental, moral or physical. 

The moral obligations, which the convert learns 
with the marvellous gift of faith, hold him to his 
Church with a strength as strong as bands of steel. 
Gratitude for the great things that came with the 
gift of faith — security, peace of mind, a constantly 
renewed purity of conscience through the ministra- 
tions of the priest in the Sacrament of Penance, the 
surcease of life's troubles and vexations, which 
spring from the fuller use of this sacrament of recon- 
ciliation, the frequent strengthening of the soul by 
the Holy Eucharist, and a thousand other blessings 
and graces — these are some of the appreciated 
bonds that bind the convert to the Church to which 
he has freely given himself and for which he is will- 
ing to lay down his life. This is the convert's gen- 
eral attitude, and it certainly does not look much like 
discontent and disgruntlement. 

No one in his sane senses denies that there are 
trials for the convert, especially in the post-conver- 



REV. JOHN E. COPUS 107 

sion days. The refined, intellectual woman, re- 
cently come from a beautifully and aesthetically ap- 
pointed Episcopalian edifice, where taste and re- 
finement are paramount, services most dignified, and 
associations of the m.ost cultured, often suddenly 
finds herself, if she be living in a small town, in a 
tawdry, little wooden church, with cheap candle- 
sticks and, perhaps, cheaper paper flowers adorning 
the altar. 

A man of intellectual acumen and mental train- 
ing finds, not unfrequently, his former social equals 
dropping away, receives the half-averted look, in- 
stead of the former warm hand-clasp ; is thrown, in 
many cases, into the society of his intellectual in- 
feriors — such trials are of no mean order, and 
hard to bear in proportion to the culture and sensi- 
tiveness of the individual. 

But are these trials such as to make the convert 
unhappy? There is rather a ringing joy in the 
heart because he is conscious that he is called on to 
pay a small price for a great blessing; to relinquish 
something held dear for the inestimably precious 
gift of the true faith with all its abundance of con- 
solations and graces and strength. 

With the distinct gift of faith from God, goes 
his own intellectual assent and his predispositions; 
and by the exercise of this assent he rejoices that he 
can do something on his own part, seeing that Al- 
mighty God has done so mucli for him on TTis. Tie 
is therefore willing, a trial though it be, to bear 



I08 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

with the frequent lack of the aesthetic in his new 
worship, to deprive himself of the consolation of 
his intellectual peers, knowing that he has a richer 
treasure in his faith, and in all that it brings him, 
than in an3rthing that he has lost. While these ex- 
periences do not obtain to any great extent in the 
larger cities, yet they are not the experiences of a 
few isolated individuals, but rather of thousands, 
and those who have to do and deal with converts to 
any extent will verify this statement. 

There is another species of trial that is frequently 
experienced by converts in their immediate post- 
conversion days. This is the bitterness of loneli- 
ness, and for this. Catholics, and not converts, are 
very largely to blame. It is the thoughtless inflic- 
tion of a very real hardship, and arises, I think, from 
the fact that Catholics, as such, being so secure and 
unworried in the possession of their faith, do not 
realize, and make no effort to realize, the isolated 
position of the new members of the Household, 
w^ho may have been sundered from all their former 
and lifelong friends and acquaintances. 

In these latter days, when anti-Catholic prejudices 
are less acute, the misery of isolation is not so fre- 
quently experienced by the convert as formerly, 
nevertheless there are enough instances of this na- 
ture among the recently received for us to recognize 
loneliness as one of the trials a convert may expect, 
at least for some time after his reception; yet, ex- 
cept one in perhaps a thousand cases, the lonesome 



REV. JOHN E. COPUS 109 

convert realizes that this trial or hardship is merely 
a passing one, and is far outweighed, even in the 
most acute cases, by the happiness that has come 
with the true faith. 

Instead of being unhappy and discontented, the 
converts that I have known in many years are the 
happiest of men, and I think that a good work is 
being accomplished in collecting and publishing the 
experiences of converts themselves, for they cer- 
tainly know their own condition better than those 
who talk so freely about them, without definite 
knowledge. 

Of course I have no means of seeing other con- 
tributions to this book, but I venture the statement 
that all will be of the same general tenor as this 
paper I have written, thus verifying my own experi- 
ence by the testimony of others. I look forward to 
the publication of the volume with much interest, 
firmly believing that each contributor will tell a story 
similar to my own. 

Error and prejudice and false assumption are hard 
to eradicate, but if fair-minded Protestants only 
knew ! if they only knew ! 



CAROLINE E. F. CORBIN, 

CHICAGO, ILL. 

Author, Social Worker; widow of Calvin R. Corbin. Presi- 
dent since 1897 of the Illinois Association Opposed to 
the Extension of Suffrage to Women. Charter member 
of the D. A. R. President Chicago Society for the Pro- 
motion of Social Purity since before 1871. Author of 
Rebecca, or a Woman's Secret, 1867 (reprinted by Jansen 
and McClurg, Chicago, 1877, from new plates, the old 
ones having been burned in the Chicago fire) ; His Mar- 
riage Vow (Lee & Shepard, Boston, 1874) ; Belle and 
the Boys (Jansen & McClurg, Chicago, 1879) ; Letters 
from a Chimney Corner (Chicago, 1886) ; A Woman's 
Philosophy of Love (Lee & Shepard, 1892), and numer- 
ous brochures dealing with suffrage. 

My experience of life in the Catholic Church has 
been most happy and satisfactory. Born in the 
eighth generation of a strictly Puritan ancestry, and 
having a critical knowledge of most of the Prot- 
estant sects ; having travelled and lived in many dif- 
ferent parts of this country and Europe, I had al- 
ways an unsatisfied longing for a true understand- 
ing of the relation between the material world and 
that spiritual one which my interior experience had 
made a certainty to me. It was therefore a most 
joyful day when, my doubts being ended, the Most 
Reverend Archbishop Quigley of the Archdiocese of 

no 



CAROLINE E. F. CORBIN ill 

Chicago received me into the Church. At last I had 
come home to the everlasting rest which God has 
provided for all wandering souls. Happy they who, 
seeking, find that rest. 

That was more than five years ago and I am re- 
joiced to testify that in all that time my spiritual 
life has deepened and widened. I have grown to a 
truer knowledge of the Bible, a more earnest faith 
in God, and a clearer view of the work provided for 
every Christian to do, in relation not only to his 
own soul, but to that of the great world around us, 
for which Christ died. 



HENRY S. DAWSON, 

NEW HAVEN, CONN. 

Bachelor of Arts, Yale College, 1894; graduate of the General 
Theological Seminary, New York City, 1904. From 1904 
to 191 1 engaged in missionary and supply charges in the 
Episcopal ministry. Received into the Church 1912. 

Only with diffidence do I comply with the request 
to write of what lies beyond the road to Rome. 
The gift of faith is from God, whose operation is 
instantaneous, but the realization of its content is a 
thing of growth, and never complete. The man 
who spends a few days in a new and interesting 
country sometimes essays to write learnedly of its 
institutions, resources, and life, with results usually 
amusing to the inhabitants of the country. Still 
more do humility and docility befit the convert, and 
it is probably true that in many cases the convert 
never really learns much that is almost innate in 
the Catholic from infancy. Certainly I may not 
even faintly hope to say anything that is new. But 
it sometimes happens that an imperfect message, 
from one unlearned, will carry its burden to the 
ears and heart of those even who have often heard 
the same things, and better things, wisely said, and 

yet remained, at least externally, unmoved. It is 

112 



HENRY S. DAWSON II3 

with hope that, if God wills, my words may thus 
reach some heart, that I write this chapter. 

The first utterance must be of negative charac- 
ter. A friend recently asked me if I would advise 
him to do what I have done, asking, not from any 
doubt in his own position, but argumentatively. 
As any Catholic must do, I answered with an em- 
phatic negative. To my surprise, he drew the con- 
clusion that I was dissatisfied and doubtful. It is 
the constant doctrine of the Catholic Church, much 
misunderstood by non-Catholics, that the grace of 
conversion is a special and great gift from God, be- 
stowed as He will, and that human words and influ- 
ence can have but a very minor part in the work; 
further, that no one should act in such a matter ex- 
cept from compelling supernatural motives. No 
one should be received but with conviction. The 
manner in which priests deal with those desirous of 
embracing the Catholic religion often surprises the 
applicant; it often seems like indifference. Con- 
versions from natural motives, even from purely 
intellectual motives, must be discouraged. The 
first thing to consider in the individual case is the 
salvation of a: soul. Men of good will are saved 
outside the body of the Church, but a man cannot 
be saved by an insincere profession of faith. God 
may impose even on the earnest seeker a time of 
waiting and uncertainty. The soul which commits 
itself wholly to His Hand, ready to act as soon as 
it knows the way of duty, with indifference on its 



114 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

own part to the one course or the other until it 
knows which is right, is safe. Premature conver- 
sions and conversions without conviction are to be 
deplored, in themselves and in their consequences. 
It is likewise true that when a person knows the 
truth he must act, without awaiting special or ex- 
traordinary light and leading. To be outside the 
external Catholic Church is safe so long as one is in 
good faith, and only so long. An honest doubt im- 
poses the duty of inquiry and prayer for knowledge 
of the truth, but is not itself a proper motive for 
conversion. 

In one important respect, my experience has been 
happier than that of most converts, for I have not 
had one positively unpleasant experience with any 
person on account of my action. My former Angli- 
can friends, as from time to time I meet them, have 
even in almost every case been as friendly and cor- 
dial as before. For this I thank God, and I hope 
that no word of mine will cause hurt or offense to 
any person. . 

These Anglican friends have been kind and in- 
terested enough, in several instances, to ask various 
questions, and it is easy to see that there are a few 
particular lines in which their thoughts are likely 
to run. One question which I have been asked, and 
w^hich is often mooted in regard to converts, is 
whether I am happy. A man's emotional states are 
subject to fluctuation, and affected by many things 
beside will and reason. I can answer, Yes. But 



HENRY S. DAWSON II5 

it is far more important to state that in the Catholic 
Church is found the satisfaction of every spiritual 
need; that I can not understand doubt and distrust 
of its entire truth, without calHng very much more 
into question than is involved between Catholics 
and advanced Anglicans; and that many positive 
causes of unhappiness in the Anglican position are 
entirely done away with when one is admitted to the 
Catholic Church. I am happy, grateful, confident, 
satisfied, and look for constant increase in every one 
of these qualities, dependent only on my own fidel- 
ity to God and His truth. 

On another point, Anglican questions are less dis- 
interested, but not less honorable. Do you believe 
in Anglican Orders ? In a matter so vitally affect- 
ing the economy of the Church, involving practice 
in a matter of utmost moment, the Church is the 
rightful judge, and I have neither fear nor difficulty 
in submitting the whole matter to her verdict. Con- 
fidence in her judgment is easy, when once the con- 
ception of the Church is grasped, and with further 
acquaintance this confidence grows. 

The argument for Anglican Orders: is a highly 
complicated one. The question may fairly be asked 
at once whether Christ, whom the common people 
have always heard gladly, can have left a vital mat- 
ter so obscure — whether He can have intended to 
impose on His people the burden of solving such a 
dispute. The form of Anglican Orders is certainly 
widely different from any known to antii[uity of 



Il6 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

which there is the slightest trace or suggestion, and 
from any approved by the Church in any known age. 
It was a new form, not only as newly propounded, 
but as widely departing from all previous uses. If 
the words uttered by the Bishop at the imposition 
of hands be taken from the first English Ordinal, 
neither the name of Bishop or priest is found, nor is 
either order clearly designated by its office. If the 
immediately preceding prayer is taken also into 
account, it will be noted that in the " Ordering of 
Priests " this prayer is not even a prayer distinctively 
for those to be ordained ; and in the " Consecration 
of Bishops," while this defect is avoided, the grace 
and power of the Episcopate are not declared nor 
asked. The prayer beginning, "Almighty God, 
Giver of all good things," has been alleged by some 
as a sufficient form. But it is not clearly indicated, 
unless in the consecration of a Bishop, that this 
prayer shall be said by a Bishop, and in fact it has 
not always been said by a Bishop. There is the 
further difficulty that the examination of the candi- 
date, which might lead to his not being ordained 
at all, follows this prayer. Finally, some have 
sought to strengthen the Anglican case by appealing 
to the whole service, arguing that the meaning of 
the form is thus shown. In fact, only by argument 
from words can any case be thus made ; for a com- 
parison of the Edwardine forms with the Pontificals 
at that time used in England shows that everything 
clearly expressing the sacrificial function was omit- 



HENRY S. DAWSON II7 

ted in the new forms. Of these features of the 
Pontifical, perhaps the most striking is the delivery 
of the instruments to the priest, with its accompany- 
ing words; in the Edwardine serAnce, this is con- 
joined with the delivery of a Bible, and the words 
uttered speak of preaching and administering sacra- 
ments, but not of sacrificing. The change in this 
direction is thorough and uniform. That it was not 
made by design is impossible. The natural inter- 
pretation is that the old idea of priesthood was re- 
jected, and that it was distinctly intended not to 
make sacrificing priests. It is but logical that in 
the light of this clear spirit of the whole service 
terms such as Bishop, Priest, Order, ambiguous in 
themselves, should be interpreted; and this inter- 
pretation agrees perfectly with the thirty-first of the 
Anglican Articles of Religion and with the known 
views of the reformers. 

There is, however, some tendency among Angli- 
cans to put the Church before Orders in the mode of 
argument, which is the sounder procedure, and to 
accept their Ordinal on the authority of the Angli- 
can church propounding it. The difficulty then 
must be faced, of ascertaining in what sense the 
Anglican church propounds it as a sufficient mode of 
ordination. Part of what has been said bears on 
this question, but let us make appeal to the teaching 
of the present day. A large number of Anglicans, 
especially among the clergy,, do certahily believe 
that the Orders conferred by the Ordinal are Catho- 



Il8 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

lie Orders, and that a sacrificing priesthood is thus 
constituted. Yet there is another section, including 
Bishops, teachers, and scholars, important in dio- 
cesan and general conventions, equal in standing to 
and having equal rights in all respects with the ad- 
vanced section, equally, sure, also, that its doctrine 
is the genuine teaching of the church, which holds 
that the sacrificing priesthood, as existing in the 
Catholic and Greek Churches, is a corruption; that 
the primitive and New Testament priesthood was of 
another character; and that the church, at the refor- 
mation, deliberately rejected the sacrificial notion 
and returned to a non-sacrificing priesthood. 

I firmly believe that nearly, I hope quite all, the 
advanced Anglican clergy are in good faith. Father 
Maturin says that he has never met one whom he 
does not believe so to be. But it is hard to think 
that there can be many who have not doubts about 
the reality of their position, at times. I knaw I had 
doubts which I conquered only with a struggle, 
doubts which were sometimes distressing, coming 
as they did just before the very times of ministra- 
tion; they were viewed, perhaps not as sins, but as 
temptations, or at least as things which it was a duty 
to conquer. At other times, I had no question. 
Yet how can the strongest and most assured Angli- 
can clergyman deny that there is a doubt, ob- 
jectively? Members of his own communion, from 
Bishops to laymen, deny the reality, in the Catholic 
sense, of his priesthood. Most Catholic and Greek 



HENRY S. DAWSON II9 

theologians regard the form by which it is conferred 
as very dubious, and the CathoHc intention as not 
estabhshed, to say the least. In short, the Catholic 
world, as he views it, does doubt very gravely, ex- 
cept perhaps .one-half of his own section thereof. 
It seems beyond the possibility of the most credu- 
lous imagination to believe that the Anglican Ordinal 
can ever be accepted by the Catholic world as a safe 
mode of conferring the sacrament of Orders. Men 
of the utmost humility do hold the advanced Angli- 
can position; but in itself there seems a savor of 
pride in regarding as certain, and risking one's 
whole position on, a claim which the rest of Cath- 
olic Christendom (again using Anglican terminol- 
ogy) with practical unanimity refuses to accept, 
and in large part unquestioningly rejects. The 
mere weight of authority makes probability against 
the Anglican contention; the argument itself is 
highly disputable. The Catholic will say much more 
than this, in view of the utterance of Pope Leo 
XIII ; but even this ought to raise serious questions 
in the mind of the Anglican clergyman who believes 
in the sacrificing priesthood and his own possession 
of it. 

The Anglican lay people, like other lay people, 
are not theologians. Their belief in regard to An- 
glican Orders is not easily ascertained, but their 
general attitude toward the clergy is very different 
from that of the Catholic laity toward the priest- 
hood. Speaking from experience, it is my honest 



I20 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

conviction that belief in the priesthood, in the Cath- 
oHc sense, is not common among AngHcan lay peo- 
ple. 

A very genuine scruple amongst Anglicans, in 
considering the cases of those who have entered the 
Catholic Church, or regarding submission itself, is 
that thus one's whole past, spiritually, is repudiated. 
Such a repudiation is undoubtedly possible for the 
convert, but is, I believe, very rare. The Catholic 
Church does not dO' this, still less ask it of the soul 
seeking admission. With regard to my own life, 
I have been, I believe, wonderfully led. There is 
no mark by which one can discriminate and say, 
This grace is sacramental. That grace is not. Mul- 
titudes of graces may be received by Anglican com- 
municants or in the Anglican confessional; this the 
Church does not dispute, but her explanation is dif- 
ferent from that of the Anglican. The life of 
grace exists among Christians of all degrees, among 
Unitarians and Jews, among Mohammedans, and, 
we may well believe, among heathen who, in spite 
of their systems, believe in the one God. But what 
of the ministrations of my Anglican days? Am I 
not under necessity of repudiating those? I do not 
believe that they were sacramental, but I hope they 
were not in vain. I can only pray God that what I 
said or did that was right may remain and bring 
forth fruit, and that what I said or did that was 
wrong may be wiped out. Who can do more than 
this? 



HENRY S. DAWSON 121 

To me, the most decided single impression caused 
by observation of the CathoHc Church is that of 
soHdity and strength. This is due in part to the 
unanimity of behef and teaching in all matters es- 
sential to practical Christian life, partly to the 
Church's history, partly to her sure confidence in 
herself and in her mission. The convert, conscious 
of his own weakness, becomes quickly conscious of 
a supporting strength not his own, of a solid foun- 
dation beneath his feet and of power to uphold him. 

Closely connected with this are the authority and 
definiteness of the Catholic Church. These are so ef- 
fective that the Catholic Church is everywhere recog- 
nized as different from other Christian bodies; and 
anyone who is interested can easily learn what she 
teaches on any matter. This is especially impressive 
to the former Anglican. Not only is it a matter of 
great difficulty to ascertain the real view of the An- 
glican church on many points, not only will its theo- 
logians dispute the question of what it does teach, 
and its officials evade decision ; but it has so far been 
impossible to make " Anglo-Catholicism " under- 
stood by people in general. The Catholic Church has 
throughout its history defined with clearness, and 
had one invariable course with those who have re- 
pudiated its definitions. With sorrow for their 
souls, yet without wavering, without hesitation, and 
without fear, it has rejected them from its fellow- 
ship, undeterred by numerical losses, even of tlie 
whole East or of England or Prussia, not swayed 



122 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

by weight of scholarship and power. In matters of 
discipHne, too, the Church is precise, not narrow 
nor legaHstic, but not vague nor hahing in its own 
mind. That one must hear ]Mass on Sundays and 
days of obligation, that one must communicate at 
Easter, and confess annually if he commit any mor- 
tal sin; that the days and seasons of fasting and 
abstinence must be observed unless, for just cause, 
one be properly excused; rules like these, of prac- 
tical Christian life, and general regulations about 
worship, sufficient to procure a large measure of 
uniformity, are plain, are enforced, and are not dis- 
obeyed without the consciousness of grave sin. Dis- 
cipline is really one of the most vital matters of 
Christian life. Some Anglicans are prone to judge 
Catholicity by ceremonial; even among the clergy, 
the test of a *' Catholic parish '' or of '' Catholic ad- 
vance '' is Hkely to be the ceremonial usage. A far 
better criterion would be the obedience of both 
clerg}^ and people to discipline. It is in this matter 
that the convert will find one of the greatest and 
most satisfactory of contrasts. 

Again, the conviction is borne in repeatedly on 
the child of the Catholic Church that man is little, 
God only is great. The convert will meet this in the 
very beginning of his approach to the Church. The 
ordinary belief of the non-Catholic about the prose- 
lyting zeal and anxiety of the Church and her min- 
isters would be amusing to the Catholic. Intellect 
and position are little esteemed; the exaltation of 



HENRY S. DAWSON 123 

human personality, to which the convert is accus- 
tomed, is wanting in the Church; for, with us, the 
influential layman is unknown, in the sense in which 
non-Catholics often use the term. To one knowing 
only the Catholic religion, the expression " lay pope " 
would seem heretical, and be entirely misunder- 
stood. The priest is regarded, not as a man of at- 
tractive personality or the opposite, of culture or 
without it, of social standing or its lack, but as the 
minister of Christ and steward of the mysteries of 
Gk)d, to be received in Christ's name; in receiving 
whomever Christ sends, the people know that they 
are receiving Christ, who acts and speaks through 
His minister. 

Hardly to be distinguished from this is the super- 
naturalness of the whole atmosphere, view, and con- 
duct of the Church. This also will be impressed 
on the convert at the very first. Once I heard an 
Anglican Bishop, one of the noblest of men, a prince 
of God though not a prince of the Church, declare 
his conviction that, with a certain sum of money, 
he could make his diocese a model " Catholic " dio- 
cese ; by keeping clergy in certain places for a ratlier 
small number of years; supporting them in the face 
of the people's indifference or antagonism, the peo- 
ple would be converted. This expression of con- 
fidence in natural means came from one of the most 
wSupernaturally-mindcd Anglicans whom I know. Tn 
extreme Protestant circles, there is a tendency even 
among students of theology, to deny or expkiin 



124 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

away the distinction between the natural and the 
supernatural; and a practical obliteration of this dis- 
tinction will be found far more extensively, and in 
more orthodox circles. The sharpness and clear- 
ness of Catholic belief on this point is in remark- 
able and refreshing contrast. 

The convert will often be surprised at the serious 
misunderstandings prevalent among his former col- 
leagues, after he has once seen the reality. Cath- 
olics would be amazed could they know the great- 
ness and numerousness of misconceptions and the 
prevalent acceptance of grotesque and distorted 
statements outside the Catholic fold. This is true 
to a higher degree among the unlearned, but to a 
very high degnee in educated men. Much anti- 
Catholic controversy would but seem to the or- 
dinary Catholic deliberately dishonest; it is impos- 
sible to explain how such things could be believed, 
or how doctrines and practices could be so greatly 
misunderstood. The convert will know, however, 
that these absurdities are honestly believed and ut- 
tered. Of seemingly obtuse or willful perversions, 
among able and honorable men, any convert, almost, 
can recall many in his own former experience. One 
of these, which involves not the perversion of a doc- 
trine but a failure at mind-reading, which is ex- 
ceedingly widespread among Anglicans, is, that the 
Anglican church is an object of special interest and 
peculiar antagonism, even of anxiety, to the clergy 
and Bishops of the Catholic Church ! I hope I shall 



HENRY S. DAWSON 125 

not hurt any Anglican readers, though I expect to 
astonish some Cathohc readers, in stating, from 
positive knowledge, that the belief actually exists 
among otherwise intelligent Anglican clergy that 
Catholic priests know that Anglican orders are valid 
and their communion is the true Blessed Sacrament, 
and are simply perverse and dishonest in refusing 
recognition. Removals of clergy from one post to 
another are sometimes reported to be punishments, 
because they believed in Anglican Orders. An An- 
glican, who writes anonymously to one of the ad- 
vanced papers, wrote to a friend oi mine, a former 
Anglican minister but now a priest, in a letter signed 
by the same nom-de-plume as in the monthly to 
which he contributes, that the ex- Anglican Catholic 
knows in his heart of hearts that the Anglican 
church is right on the points in dispute! I should 
not be surprised if the writer of this statement were 
proved to be a man of exalted charity, in spite of 
the apparent lack of that quality in his utterance; 
but the statement is hardly less astonishing, disre- 
garding the question of charity, than it is in that 
respect. 

May I, in all kindness, ask what is the advanced 
Anglican conception of the unity of the Church? 
Having been an Anglican minister for eight years, 
and having taught several classes of children that 
the Catholic Church was externally divided into 
Roman, Eastern, and Anglican, but yet really one 
— I must acknowledge my own utter inability to 



126 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

answer this question. It seems to me that unity, 
as a distinct note of the Church, was nearly or quite 
wanting in my conception, and in all Anglican state- 
ments which I have ever heard or read, even when 
dealing precisely with this topic. I believe that if 
** Anglican Catholics " would really face this ques- 
tion, they would attain to a more receptive position 
for the light and grace of conversion. 

For about three months of this year I was in a 
city of twenty-five thousand inhabitants!, in one of 
those Anglican dioceses which glory in the name 
Protestant Episcopalian and find it accurately de- 
scriptive, one of those dioceses which among Angli- 
cans are often grouped as the Virginia dioceses, 
Virginia, Southern Virginia, and West Virginia. 
The question came to my mind, if I should call it 
a question at all, what I would have done had I thus 
been placed there in my Anglican days. There are 
two Episcopalian churches. One, in the heart of 
the city, according to its notices sent to the hotel 
and posted in the lobby, and its newspaper publica- 
tions, had the service of Holy Communion usu- 
ally on the first Sunday of the month and on holy 
days; on Sundays always at a late hour. It is just 
possible that there may have been early celebrations 
which were not advertised; had I been then an 
Anglican, I should have found out. But for the 
present purpose I disregard this slight possibility, 
and suppose the city to be like others in the Vir- 
ginias and elsewhere. What could an Anglican 



HENRY S. DAWSON 12/ 

visitor, holding the rehgion which I held and tried 
to teach, have done on the Sundays v\/hen there was 
no communion service? I suppose a minister might 
have deemed himself justified in celebrating soli- 
tarily in his room ; some certainly would, and I think 
I should. But suppose I had been there as a lay- 
man? I should, in my strongest High Anglican 
days, have had to attend what I should then have 
called the " Roman " church on three-fourths of the 
Sundays of the year, and to confine my communions 
to the rare occasions when the Episcopal church 
gave opportunity. For confession, it would not im- 
probably have been necessary to travel out of the 
diocese. Can this in any real sense be the Catholic 
Church ? 

Desiring earnestly to speak the truth in love, it 
seems important to add that the efforts of Anglicans 
to gain recognition as Catholics have been doomed to 
futility. Individual exceptions may indeed be cited ; 
but the world as a whole, that world which Christ 
sent His Church to teach and to save, is hardly con- 
scious that these efforts have been made, and can 
not understand the position of those who make 
them. In its great logic mill, the Anglo-Catholic 
idea has been tested and rejected. Where Angli- 
can teaching and practice are o-f the most advanced 
type, the community in general, religious and non- 
religious, is still likely to express wonder why those 
people do not become " real Catholics/' and ex- 
planation, according to the test of experience, is im- 



128 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

possible. Consult the United States census reports ; 
follow the religious columns of such papers as the 
'* Literary Digest " ; turn to Protestant religious pa- 
pers ; read the daily newspapers ; listen to the com- 
ments and expressions of ordinary men and women. 
The claim of the advanced Anglicans to be a part 
of the Catholic Church is summarily rejected; it is 
deemed unfounded, even impossible. As I have 
noted personally, before and since my conversion, 
even Anglican believers in their own Catholicism 
will sometimes, when off guard, use the word Cath- 
olic exactly as we do. 

Those of our Anglican brethren who receive and 
accept the grace of conversion must expect difficul- 
ties. They w411 probably find many things, of a 
human and temporal nature, which they will not 
like. But all sacrifices will be repaid in this life a 
thousand fold, and are not comparable to the glory 
that shall be revealed. In the Catholic Church they 
will find the one foundation for their faith ; what is 
exotic and disputed in their present environment 
they will here find natural and flourishing (natural 
according to the super-nature of the Kingdom) ; 
for here is indeed that Kingdom after which they 
long and strive. 

If any word of mine has caused offense, I sin- 
cerely ask pardon. May God speed these words for 
truth and for healing. 



LAURA GARDNER EDWARDS/ 

PITTSBURGH, PA. 

The fundamental basis of thankfulness for my 
conversion and my subsequent satisfaction and con- 
tentment as a Catholic is certainty. It will be 
asked, ''Why are you certain?" I answer: Be- 
cause I have certain authority. The High Church- 
man may say : "I, too, have authority.'' Then I 
ask, WHERE IS IT? With the Bishops? Can 
two Anglican bishops be found who are in exact 
agreement on even the vital matters of Faith ? Some 
differ in opinion on the very fundamentals of faith 
as widely as the poles; one may deny the Virgin 
birth and another believe as devoutly in the Real 
Presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament 
as the Holy Father himself. Which authority (?) 
shall the poor layman take ? 

Or the High Churchman may say : " The prayer 
book is sufficient authority for my faith." Where 
does he find authority for his faith in the Holy 
Sacrifice of the Mass? The thirty-first of the 39 
articles of Religion of the Episcopal Church says: 
" Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in the which 
it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer 

i2g 



130 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission 
of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dan- 
gerous deceits.'' What is the only logical deduc- 
tion? The Host in the Anglican Communion is 
merely a particle of blest bread — it is only a '' me- 
morial." Indeed, the 28th article distinctly denies 
the Real Presence. 

As a Catholic I AM CERTAIN —'' I know that 
my Redeemer liveth " in the Most Holy Sacrament 
of the Altar. In the Catholic Church there is no 
divergence of belief in all that pertains to faith and 
morals. What the Church teaches to-day was the 
teaching of the first and each succeeding century. 
Councils and Popes by Creed and Bull have definitely 
defined certain elemental doctrines, and it is a 
foolish falsehood that the Catholic Church has 
added anything to the original deposit of Faith. 
During the years I struggled to be loyal to the 
" Catholicity " of Anglicanism I did not succeed in 
having a single serious doubt or difficulty removed 
by either controversial books or the devout ministers 
who were my spiritual directors. However, in look- 
ing back on those difficulties which once troubled me 
so deeply — the validity of Anglican Orders ; the 
incongruity of Canon 19, etc., seem now of little 
moment compared to the absolute lack of a central 
authority and the consequent anarchy and disorder ; 
no unity of faith — no, not even in one single parish. 
Why, really, in that respect Christian Science is bet- 



LAURA G/ii^DNER EDWARDS 13 1 

ter off — at least this sect has a definite authority 
in " Mother Eddy." 

If one is a thoroughly satisfied Protestant, the 
Episcopal Church is a suitable church home, but if 
one sees in the adumbration of Catholic Faith and 
Practice, as presented by " High Church Fathers," 
a vision of the glory to be revealed In the One Holy 
Catholic Church, then he who' is wise v^ill leave the 
shadow for the substance, however great the per- 
sonal sacrifice may be. 

And be assured God demands a sacrifice for the 
great gift of conversion — it is asked of each indi- 
dividual in a different way — but every convert to 
the True Faith finds sacrifice inextricably woven in 
with his acceptance of the gift. 

I hope some day to write a book on this subject, 
and it will probably take many pages to cover in de- 
tail my reasons for absolute satisfaction in the Cath- 
olic Church ; so I have tried to confine this article to 
CERTAINTY. It may seem a small matter, but I 
am particularly conscious of this certainty every 
time I am asked the question, " What is your 
church?" I am always so thankful to answer 
briefly, *^ The Catholic Church." Just that — no ex- 
planations as in other days — '' I am an AngHcan 
Catholic — not Roman Catholic. You know the 
Anglican Church is a branch of the Catholic 
Church," etc., etc. Now when I say " I am a Cath- 
olic," I am never asked, " What kind of a Cath- 



132 BEYOND THE ROAE TO ROME 

olic ? " I am now on solid ground. I am certain. 
Even the " man in the street ' does not question the 
certain authority behind the statement, *' I am a 
Catholic." 

I think I have answered the question as to why 
I am satisfied in the Catholic Church. Satisfied! 
There are no words to express my joy and thanks- 
giving for the gift I have received. No more 
doubts — no more uncertainty! I am as sure I 
am in the One, True, Holy Catholic and Apostolic 
Church as that I am alive. I am absolutely sure of 
my own individuality. I do not need to have the 
certainty that " I am I " explained theologically or 
philosophically — I am I — nothing and no one 
could explain away my individual entity — I am 
as certain that the Catholic Church is the only true 
Church as I am of my own entity — and hence, no 
more doubts ! No more uncertainty ! Deo gratias ! 



ELLSWORTH S. ELLIS, M.D., 

MANISTEE, MICHIGAN. 

The convert from the Protestant to the Catholic 
rehgion is bridging so* wide and deep a chasm, he 
very naturally shrinks from the decisive step of 
seeking admission to the Catholic Church. He is 
convinced of her divine origin; he identifies her as 
the church founded by our Lord Himself; a church 
which is a living organism, animated and guided 
by the Holy Ghost. A church with authority and 
commission tO' teach all nations, and to teach infalli- 
bly; a church against which by divine promise the 
powers of hell shall not prevail. Convinced of all 
this, he stands at the brink shivering with apprehen- 
sion, because to the Protestant the interior life of 
the Catholic Church is terra incognito. His con- 
scious and sub-conscious mind has for years been 
receiving lurid impressions of the intellectual and 
spiritual tyranny of Rome, and the lack of vital re- 
ligion among her adherents. The bugbear of con- 
fession looms up before him and he feels that it is 
not only a distressing ordeal but that he has missed 
the training that has prepared life long Catholics 
for its exercise. He knows himself to be unfa- 

133 



134 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

miliar with the great central act of worship, the 
Mass, and unfamiliar also with the popular devo- 
tions peculiar to Catholics. The Rosary, so dear 
to Catholics, seems to him as he views it from the 
outside, an inane and profitless repetition of many 
Our Fathers and Hail Marys. Life long Catholics 
often wonder that we hesitate so long, and that some 
timid souls draw back, waiting in some cases many 
years before taking the final step that lands them in 
the Church. I think that the Arch Eoiemy of souls 
plays upon our fears and strives mightily and some- 
times successfully to bar our entrance. But when 
conviction and conscience will no longer be denied 
and by God's grace we are given courage and 
strength to seek admission, how quickly the difficul- 
ties disappear! How sympathetically and tenderly 
we are piloted by the priest! How like a tender 
mother, the Church opens her arms to receive and 
embrace us ! 

And now, after five years within Peter's Sheep- 
fold, what shall I say of my experiences, how shall 
I describe my impression o-f the Church as viewed 
from the inside? 

Let me say at the outset that my fondest hopes 
have been more than realized. I have had in all 
this time a peace of mind, a certainty of forgive- 
ness of sin, a joy in religion, that I had never before 
experienced. I am no longer tossed about by mere 
opinions and schools of thought. I can rest in per- 
fect trust and confidence upon the teachings of the 



ELLSWORTH S. ELLIS, M.D. 135 

Catholic Church. In her teachings, I hear the voice 
of our dear Lord, for she speaks by His authority 
and in His name. Her clergy, from Our Holy 
Father, the Pope, to the humblest priest, all preach 
and teach the same doctrine. 

Among the laity, what faith, what humility, what 
devotion, what prayerfulness have I observed! In 
the sixty years of life previous to my admission to 
the Catholic Church, I have seen beautiful examples 
of Christian living among Protestants. I can cheer- 
fully testify to it, and thank God that it is true. 
But the Protestant world confesses with sorrow the 
decay of faith among its people, and to vast num- 
bers of them religion has become little beyond the 
institutional practice of a vague humanitarianism. 
Among Catholics, faith is deep', warm and vital. 
Heaven is stormed with prayers. Novena follows 
novena. The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by vio- 
lence, and Almighty God rewards such faith by 
wonderful and miraculous answers to prayer. 
Never before have I seen such praying as is going on 
constantly among Catholics. If I gO' to church half 
an hour or an hour before service begins, I find peo- 
ple there upon their knees. When I leave the 
church after service, people are still there praying. 
I love tO' see the devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. 
Little children, youth, middle age, and aged, press- 
ing forward to the communion rail, and all with 
the utmost reverence and recollection. I love to 
watch their faces, when having received their Dear 



136 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

Lord, they return. It seems to me that sanctity 
visibly shines from within. 

I think that I will never forget the impressions 
of my first Christmas as a Catholic. The large 
church I attended was filled to its capacity at five 
o'clock ]\Iass, and the whole congregation, seem- 
ingly without exception, received Holy Communion. 
The people passed up the center aisle in a solid 
phalanx, kneeling reverently while those at the rail 
received, then as they returned to their seats through 
the side aisles, the great mass of people surged for- 
ward a few steps again to kneel, and so on tmtil all 
had received. It was enough to bring tears of hap- 
piness to one's eyes to see a sight like that. 

Long before I was a convert, or even imagined 
that I should be one, I had recognized that children 
trained in the parochial schools had far better man- 
ners than those taught in the public schools. But it 
is only since J became a Cathclic, that I have appre- 
ciated the excellence of Catholic schools. Taught 
in most instances by the devoted Sisters and super- 
vised by the parish priests, they give a sound edu- 
cation in religion and secular learning. The public 
schools cannot, if they would, teach religion, and 
their teaching of ethics and morals without the au- 
thority of religion falls upon sterile ground. 
Thoughtful Protestants to-day are aghast over 
viciousness and crime in the very schools themselves, 
and some are strongly advocating that each denom- 
ination establish its schools where the teaching of 



ELLSWORTH S. ELLIS, M.D. 137 

religion may go on hand in hand with secular edu- 
cation, thus tacitly admitting the wisdom of the 
Catholic Church in controlling at such great cost 
and sacrifice the education of the young. 

But I must not run on and on like Tennyson's 
brook, and yet I find no good place to stop. I fear 
I have already exhausted the patience of the editor 
and that she will summarily consign my contribu- 
tion to the waste basket or blue pencil it tmmerci- 
fully. 

In conclusion I will say that if the convert fails 
to make advances toward the perfection that Al- 
mighty God requires, it will be from his own failure 
to cooperate and correspond with the rich graces so 
abundantly bestowed through the channels of the 
Church. 



TOHX G. P. EWEXS, CM., 

ST. vixcext's semixary, germaxtowx", pa. 

Late Rector of Holy Trinity Protestant Episcopal Church, 

Manistee, Z^Iich. ; formerly Assistant Minister of St. 

Clement's Church, Philadelphia, Pa. 

The memories of religious experience do not 
quickly fade away. They are ever with us, and 
though they seem to vanish, they are but latent — 
pass onward with tis — and finally reappear to con- 
front us at the judgment seat of Christ. To me, 
at any rate, religious experiences have ever been 
most real and sacred, and were I to consult solely 
my o\\'n inclination, would remain forever hidden 
in the secret place of my own soul. This may not 
be, however, for I have been asked to write of my 
religious experience, since the day of my reception 
into the one, true fold of the Redeemer — down to 
the present time. 

Through nearly half a centur}' — first as laic and 
afterwards as its minister — the Anglican Church 
claimed and received my reverence and respect. I 
loved it earnestly, for as a system it at one time pro- 
fessed to teach the whole Truth of God, and to hold 
fast '' the faith once delivered to the saints.'' In 
making such a profession it appealed for and 
claimed the allegiance of all within its fold. 

This applies, equallv, of course, to the Holy, 
' 138 



JOHN G. P. EWENS, CM. 139 

Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church. She, too, un- 
doubtedly and deservedly lays claim to the allegiance 
of men, and in so doing, appeals to the experience 
of her adherents in justification of her claim. She, 
like other claimants, desirous of her name and her- 
itage, promises '' reward exceeding great," but un- 
like them, she, and she alone, redeems her promises. 

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. 

Many circumstances had combined to shake my 
faith in the Catholicity of the Anglican Church. 

Frequent denials of the Faith had been tolerated, 
and even encouraged, by those in authority. 

The Virgin Birth and the Resurrection had been 
called into question, or explained away by many of 
her ministers. 

One of these. Dr. Crapsey of Rochester, N. Y., 
was indeed tried for heresy, and deposed from the 
ministry, but on the next or second Sunday suc- 
ceeding his deposition, he had a score, or more, of 
public clerical supporters in as many dioceses and 
not one was disciplined or even silenced. It was 
clear to me that on a vital point of doctrine the 
Anglican was — either unwilling, — or if willing — 
powerless to defend the Faith. If unwilling — she 
had denied the Faith and become apostate — and 
if unable — then ''the gates of hell had prevailed 
against her " and therefore she could never have 
been Catholic — and if she were not Catholic, 
neither was I. 



I40 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

My convictions were shaken, yet when I remem- 
bered the hundreds of devoted and exemplary clergy- 
men of that church ^' spending and being spent " 
for it, from a firm belief in its Catholicity — I hesi- 
tated. I had known many such — Robert Rad- 
clyffe Dolling — who literally w^orked himself to 
death in his devotion tO' her, and to God's poor, or 
as he lovingly called them '^ the friends of God"; 
A. H. Stanton, who served all his ministerial life 
as a curate, and without pay — from the same mo- 
tive. There are many others, both in this country 
and in England, — most dear and valued friends — 
who are now either priests of God in various lands, 
or preparing to be such as members of the Society 
of Jesus. There w^ere still others known to me by 
their writings alone, men of great intellectual force, 
acute thinkers and observers ; such as the late Canon 
Liddon of St. Paul's, and the present deservedly 
respected Bishop of London, Dr. Winnington-In- 
gram, — all of whom pronounced in favor of the 
Anglican claims. Was it possible that all these could 
be wrong, and I alone right ? The General Conven- 
tion, held in Richmond, Va., in the fall of 1907, 
gave the answer. That answer — given in acts 
which spoke louder than words — was that the 
Anglican Church, in America at least, was essen- 
tially Protestant and absolutely unconscious of a 
Divine Mission of teaching, ruling, or sanctifying 
the faithful, for in ^obedience to suggestions w^hich 
seem to have originated (according to its Official 



JOHN G. P. EWENS, CM. 141 

Journal of Convention for 1905, pp. 598, 607, 609, 
610) with the Presbyterians it enacted: 

1. "The Open Pulpit Canon" (Canon XIX). 

By which representatives of the various non-Cath- 
olic bodies, including the Unitarians, could be, and 
as a matter of fact were, admitted to the pulpits of 
the Church, and authorized to teach and instruct the 
faithful. Not a single Bishop voted against it. 

It endorsed, — and therefore became liable for — 

2. The Declaration of The Shanghai Conference. 

THE DECLARATION OF THE SHANGHAI CONFERENCE. 

This conference, composed of representatives of 
Anglicanism and every non-Catholic sect having mis- 
sionaries in China, met in Shanghai and decided to 
form and did form some sort of " Chinese Church.'' 
Its members finally agreed in declaring themselves 
^^ One Body," but stated expressly that — 

'' They did not adopt any creed as the basis of 
church unity ; " and the General Convention en- 
dorsed that " Declaration " with gratitude to God, 
and with cordial acknowledgment of its truly 
** Catholic Spirit " — and here again, — as in the 
case of the '' Open Pulpit Canon " — not a single 
Bishop voted against it. 

My belief in the Catholicity of the Anglican Church 
was gone, yet with that strange darkness of spiritual 
vision, which is the terrible punishment of heresy, 
my belief in my possession of the Catholic priest- 
hood remained, in spite of the fact that the Sov- 



142 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

ereign Pontiff, in whose Supremacy and Infallibility 
in matters of Faith and Doctrine I believed, had de- 
clared to the contrary many years before. 

To maintain that the Pope can infallibly define 
Truth but cannot infallibly discern, point out, and 
condemn contradictions of that Truth — is to main- 
tain an absurdity — and yet — without realizing it 
— I was doing this. The mists and fogs of error 
had yet to be dispelled by the '' great and mighty 
wind " of the Spirit of God. 

Meanwhile I was advised, — by my Anglican con- 
fessor and those before whom I placed my difficul- 
ties — that " it was my duty to remain w^here God 
had placed me, and to discharge my office as a priest 
on behalf of those souls whom God had committed 
to my care and keeping." 

I was not convinced of either the wisdom or prac- 
ticability of this course, for had the Holy Apostles 
acted upon such advice when called by our Lord out 
of Judaism — there would have been no Christian 
Church, — so f a^r as they were concerned — and how 
indeed could my advisers find, on their own princi- 
ples, a reason for the existence of Anglicanism it- 
self ? Should it not, on such principles, " have re- 
mained " at the Reformation " where God had 
placed it?" — in Godly union and concord with the 
Holy Roman Church? 

I, however, thought it the part of humility to 
obey; yet, I could not forget that the first soul God 
had ever committed to my charge w^as — m.y own. 



JOHN G. P. EWENS, CM. 143 

If I did not feel myself secure in this regard — how 
dare I assure, or even attempt to assure, others? 
Could I save my own soul, while actually outside 
and apart from the Holy Roman Church? This, 
stripped of all gloss, was the question; and yet to me 
there remained, at the same time, a real difficulty — 
the surrender of what I then believed was the priest- 
hood. 

The last essay in a book of '' Re-Union Essays " 
written by a " Roman Catholic Priest " influenced 
me injuriously. It dealt with the effect of the Bull 
'^ Apostolicse Curae " on Anglican Ordinations. I 
was not aware at the time that immediately upon its 
appearance, proceedings were at once contemplated 
for its condemnation, which were suspended be- 
cause of the last illness of the Diocesan, and' the 
author's own lamented and pathetic death. 

Having read this book, I consulted once more and 
for the last time, an Anglican clergyman — now, 
thank God, a Catholic priest — and, while I doubted 
not the sincerity of his counsel, I saw that it rested 
on nothing else save his own personal conviction 
that he had, as he wrote me, '' a special vocation im- 
posed upon him by God, and accompanying that vo- 
cation, certain Divine Guarantees which held him 
steady and serene at his post though the night was 
dark and stormy." His advice to me was that I 
should do likewise — namely, " remain at my post," 
etc. Of course a devout Methodist would claim the 
same assurance and give this as his ground for re- 



144 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

maining in Methodism — and besides — I was re- 
alizing by degrees that the mission of the Church 
was to save me, instead of its being my mission to 
save the Church. 

I had for many years lived and wished to live on 
terms of the greatest amity with the clergy of the 
Catholic Church. Some believed in my sincerity 
and good faith and said so. Others did not. But 
whether believing in my sincerity and good faith or 
not, they all agreed on one point — I was not and 
never had been — a priest, and I have never yet met 
a single Catholic priest, whether in England, Ire- 
land, or in the Colonies; on the Continent or in 
America, who could or would acknowledge Anglican 
Orders. 

The remembrance of the kindness and good lives 
of these men now stood me in good stead, and I con- 
sulted a Catholic priest, a holy and humble man of 
God, — free of all purely controversial bitterness of 
either feeling or language. To him I laid bare the 
troubles of my soul. He listened in all the sym- 
pathy and kindness of his heart, did not even once 
attempt to argue, but advised me to pray. This, at 
the time, appeared to me superfluous advice in view 
of the fact that my daily — almost hourly — prayer 
was " Oh, Lord my God, make Thou my darkness 
light." However, I followed his good counsel and 
advice, but the more earnestly I prayed, the more 
did the difficulties that troubled me increase. 

A severe illness caused my removal to a hospital 



JOHN G. P. EWENS, CM. 145 

under the care of the Sisters of Mercy. I know 
that it has been said by some of my former friends 
that these good and pious women, by their persist- 
ence in rehgious controversy, brought about my 
conversion. Nothing could be more untrue. They 
certainly wished for my conversion, and used means 
to bring it about — but their method was not of 
this world. Prayer and good works, inspired by 
faith in the Redeemer — these were their weapons 
and with these alone they did battle for my soul. 

I soon asked them to pray for me. They did so — 
or rather I should say — continued to pray for me, 
but they abstained from and avoided controversy. 

Of course, I did not neglect reading, for I read 
all that I could find on both sides of the question — 
and first of all The Holy Scriptures. Besides this 
I read Dr. Gore's " Roman Catholic Claims " and 
Dom Chapman's reply; the works O'f Frs. Ryder 
and Richardson; Rev. Spencer Jones' ''England 
and the Holy See ; " Cardinal Newman's " Angli- 
can Difficulties," etc. The books which helped me 
most were, James Gairdner's '' History of the Eng- 
lish Church in the Sixteenth Century," and Mon- 
signor Benson's "A City on a Hill." This little 
book, coupled with the weighty influence of his un- 
selfish example, contributed much in guiding my 
steps into the way of peace. 

I wrote at this time to a Catholic priest, — he had 
once been an Anglican minister and had succeeded 
me at St. Clement's, Philadelphia. His reply 



146 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

helped me much, and the sympathetic kindliness, 
bom of experience, with which he met and grap- 
pled with my difficulties won my heart. His clos- 
ing words were, *' Let each man save himself and 
so point out the way to otliers/' Accompanying 
this letter was Fr. Semple's book on " Anglican Or- 
dinations, The Theolog}^ of Rome and Canterbury 
in a Nutshell.'' Like every other work written by 
the illustrious sons of St. Ignatius Loyola, it went 
right to the heart of the matter. 

In order that I should be perfectly unbiased I now 
wrote to some very dear friends — then Anglican 
ministers — only to find their difficulties the same as 
my own. They are now, thank God, Catholic 
priests. 

On Passion Sunday, April 5, 1908, I celebrated 
the Anglican Communion for the last time, for I 
still believed in the probability of my being a priest. 

I can never forget the agony of that day, and yet 
I thought it right to use every means of grace I 
fancied I possessed. The awful " Preparation at 
the foot of the Altar," in which I called upon God 
to " Judge me and distinguish my cause " made me 
tremble. Was I a priest or not? — if not, I dare 
not continue — if I were, then I dare not surcease 
from offering the Holy Sacrifice. No ray of bright- 
ness from on high shone do^vn upon the wilderness 
of my soul. 

I celebrated and genuflected that day with a con- 
ditional Intention : pouring out my soul meanwhile, 



JOHN G. P. EWENS, CM. 147 

in intense supplication for God's Light and God's 
Truth, both of which came that night with the 
brightness of the sun at noon-day and I saw before 
me the City of God — " the City that hath founda- 
tions " whose Builder and Maker is God, and whose 
corner stone is Christ — even the Holy Roman 
Church, and recognized her at once as the Bride of 
the Lamb and my Mother. 

I knew it at last and knew that I knew it, and 
with that certitude of Faith, came the certitude of 
the co'uviction and knowledge that I was not a priest 
— and so must resign my office and go forth — 
and go forth — alone. The very thought was as 
the chill of approaching death, and the reality, even 
as death itself, but as to the devout Christian soul 
^* death is but the Gate of Life Immortal," so my 
death ecclesiastical was but the entrance to the life 
of Christ's Body mystical. 

What I had heretofore " seen through a glass 
darkly " had been impressed on my mind " by our 
unhappy divisions," and now the clear light of Faith 
had illumined the darkness of my understanding, 
and convinced me: (i) of the absolute necessity 
of some Authority; (2) that such an Authority 
must be living and infallible; (3) that this living 
and infallible Authority had been, actually and per- 
manently, established by our dear Lord Himself, in 
the person of St. Peter, and his successors — the 
Pontiffs of the Holy Roman Church. 

Next morning I resigned my office and very soon 



148 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

after had an interview with my Bishop — one of 
God's noblemen — manly and strong, — strong 
enough to be tender, humble enough to be kind. 

Without a word of reproach he listened as I told 
him of my purpose — and then, with a pathos and 
kindness I cannot forget, asked me if I could not 
wait and think it all over again. I humbly told 
him I dare not wait — the call of God had come 
and I must be true to Him and to my own soul. " I 
would not have you anything else," was his reply, 
and it revealed to me the depth and earnestness of 
this truly noble man. 

With a kindness and consideration I have never 
known equalled in a similar case, he made arrange- 
ments for my formal deposition, and as soon as that 
had taken place I applied in person to the present 
Bishop of Toledo, at that time Vicar General of 
Grand Rapids, for admission into the fold of Christ. 
It was Holy Week and despite the pressure of his 
many duties, he gave me ungrudgingly of his time, 
and at his suggestion I went to the house of the 
Paulist Fathers in Chicago, where I was received 
into the Church. 

EXCHANGE OF DOUBT FOR CERTITUDE. 

At the moment of my reception I was at once 
conscious of a great change. Heretofore I had 
constantly labored to convince, not only the world 
at large, but even the vast miajority of my co-re- 
ligionists, that I was a Catholic. Now everyone 



JOHN G. P. EWENS, CM. 149 

admitted it as a fact. In a word, I had exchanged 
doubt for certitude and a narrow nationahsm for 
Cathohcity. I was no longer struggHng to hold the 
Faith — the Faith held me firmly in its power and 
keeping. 

EXPERIENCES. 

And now I have been asked for my experiences 
in the Catholic Church. It is very difficult to give 
these: for it seems as if one were asking me to pass 
judgment on my mother. Yet for the sake oif God, 
the souls whom God loves, and for whom His Son 
died— for very love of her — aye, for the sake of 
many whom I love and who are " not far from the 
Kingdom of God " — I will answer, and tell what 
she has been to me since the day when, like a tired 
child I stumbled intoi her arms, and sank to rest 
upon her bosom. And yet there is a difficulty in 
doing so, for it has become such a fixed prejudice 
in some minds that those who have passed from 
Anglicanism or Protestantism to Catholicism are 
always unhappy and wishing to return; that one is 
tempted to exclaim, ^' Lord, who' has believed our 
report?'' 

Much as I loved the Anglican Church, and dear 
as its members still remain in my affections, I have 
neither the desire nor the will to exchange the great 
gift of certainty in faith for the dearly purchased 
speculations of a merely human and fallible society. 
I know the charms of Anglicanism, her charms of 
speech, the goodliness of her temples, and the ex- 



ISO BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

traordinary attraction of her music. I know, too, the 
sanctity, culture, and earnestness of most of her min- 
isters, yet none of these things move me to return, 
for " I know whom I have beheved " and from my 
very heart I tell all men that the despised and re- 
jected Roman Church has taught me to know the 
Christ of God more clearly, — love Him more in- 
tensely, and serve Him more earnestly than in all 
my life before. And this is not to be wondered at 
— for is she not His Bride and am I not her Son ? 
And first of all as a. fond and wise mother she has 
taught me 

PERSONAL DEVOTION TO OUR LORD. 

It is a frequent charge brought against the Cath- 
olic Church that she teaches much devotion to the 
saints and very little to our Blessed Lord. Noth- 
ing can be further from the truth. Devotion ever 
manifests itself by suffering, sacrifice, and obedi- 
ence: and so greatly does the Church of God love 
her Redeemer and Lord, that she will " allow no 
man to come between that Lord and the souls of 
those children " of whom she travails in her birth 
pangs '' until Christ be formed in them." No, not 
even the father who begot them nor the mother w^ho 
bore them in her womb, and nourished them at her 
breast, must come between God and their souls. 
To one and all she speaks in the very words of 
Christ her Lord, " Unless a man leave his father 
and mother and all that he hath he cannot be the 



JOHN G. P. EWENS, CM. 151 

disciple " of Christ her Spouse. The convert and 
every child of hers must make choice between, the 
Christ of God, and the earthly relative or friend. 
For love of that Christ they choose, and sacrifice 
on this earth : a father's confidence, a mother's love, 
the mpst tender of all affections, their very means 
of livelihood — aye, even life itself, and all for His 
sake. It is a living martyrdom, perhaps, but 
through it and by it the whole man is transformed 
and conformed to the likeness of his beloved Lord. 
And just because the Church is the true spouse of 
Christ, and because of her very love for Him does 
she demand all this — not for the increase of her 
own glory by the belittling of Christ's — but in or- 
der that all " may know Him and the power of His 
Resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, 
being made conformable to His death." The brand 
of suffering is the brand of love: '^the stroke of 
the sword is the accolade of knighthood ; " and so 
at the very outset she will show him " how great 
things he must suffer for Christ's Name's sake." By 
his willingness to endure he proves his willingness 
to love — and by his endurance proves the reality 
of that love for Him " Who first loved us." Can 
there be any stronger test of love to our dear Lord 
than this? 

And then the joy of an ever present Lord — a 
willing captive — "the prisoner of love" in the 
Tabernacle of the Altar of God. Once in the years 
long since past was He a willing Prisoner in the 



152 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

hands of His enemies. They exalted Him on the 
Throne of the Cross — and He drew all men to 
Him. Now once again, is He a willing Prisoner, 
but this time — in the hands of His friends, and for 
very love they exalt Him on the Throne of the 
Tabernacle and He draws all hearts to Himself. 
Oh, is it any harder to believe in accordance with 
His own word : '' This is My Body," than to be- 
lieve that the Captive of Gethsemane — that Pris- 
oner covered with the spittle of His enemies, jeered 
at, mocked at and insulted before Caiphas and 
Pilate's judgment seat, and Who finally dies the 
death of a slave and malefactor upon the Cross, is 
Almighty God? To me, at any rate, very love of 
Him forbids all questioning the Word of the Eternal 
Truth. And "who hath known the mind of the 
Lord " to dare say " He meant it not '' ? Love ac- 
cepts unquestioningly the statements of the beloved. 
To sum up, what have I gained by the change ? 
I have gained Certitude in place of Doubt, 
Authority for Anarchy, 

Catholicity in place of unhistorical Provincialism, 
Stability instead of Constant Change, 
And finally as the resultant of all these a great 
satisfaction and peace.^ Through many troubles 
and adversities He Who loved me has brought me 
to His holy hill and to His Tabernacles. Few in 
the course of nature are the years which lie before 
me, yet I will hope still in God, and give praise to 
Him " Who is the salvation of my countenance and 



JOHN G. P. EWENS, CM. 153 

my God; " for I am now in '' the City of God," the 
Holy Roman Catholic Church, whose never ending 
song is '' Jesu dulcis memoria," and whose walls 
ever resound with His praise, '' and the Lamb is the 
Light thereof." In a short time I must stand in 
that Presence. The roseate hues of the early dawn 
of Faith have passed, " The brightness of the day " 
of Hope has come, '' The Crimson of the sunset 
skies" is fast fading — and what lies beyond? — 
The Possession of God forever. This will be my 
Eternal Gain in place of what I have lost by becom- 
ing a Catholic. Oh, my relatives, beloved old par- 
ishioners whom I love with a love unquenchable, 
this is what I have gained though I have lost you. 

May the morn of Faith and Love soon dawn upon 
you. And with that morn may the Angels of God 
smile upon you, most dear friends, whose faces " I 
have loved long since but lost awhile." 



VERY REV. HIRAM FRANCIS FAIRBANKS, 

MILWAUKEE, WIS. 

Author of ''A Visit to Europe and the Holy Land" (Ben- 

ziger) ; member, Historical Society of Wisconsin, 

Archaeological Inst, of America, etc. 

The star which led the wise men to Jerusalem was 
the same star that led them to the Infant Christ in 
Bethlehem, although they had learned in Jerusalem 
from the infallible voice of divine authority where 
they should find Him. 

In like manner that kindly light of God's grace 
which had led me to* Rome has continued with me. 
But the kindly light of God's grace does not take 
the place of the divine teaching authority which the 
Incarnate Son of God has established on earth, but 
it goes with it and gives light and strength to be 
obedient to it. The road that led me to Rome was 
not so clear as that road in which I have walked 
ever since, for this latter road is the king's high- 
way, and it is so plain tO' every child of grace that 
*^ a wayfaring man though a fool cannot err 
therein." And from that day of my submission 
until now, no such supreme folly or insanity as to 
stray into any other way has ever crossed my mind. 

After I became a Catholic I decided to leave col- 

154 



REV. HIRAM FRANCIS FAIRBANKS 1 55 

lege, where I should otherwise have had to remain 
for one year before taking my degree in the classical 
course; although my classmates met and unani- 
mously voted to ask me to stay with them under any 
circumstances, I returned to my father's house in 
the village where he was a minister and where many 
years afterwards he died. When my change in re- 
ligion became known it was the cause of all kinds 
of comments, which were extremely painful to my 
father, and his wounds gave me even greater pain 
than they gave him. It was our martyrdom, for 
my mother suffered with both of us. 

It may be of interest to relate a few of the more 
agreeable happenings of this time. One day I had 
some business in the village. It was a pleasant day 
and the usual crowd had assembled in front of the 
village store. They were listening to a rather en- 
tertaining talker, a young man from Kentucky, who 
sitting on the head of a barrel was giving utterance 
to all kinds of sentiments on various subjects. It 
was during the civil war, and some of his opinions 
were decidedly unpleasant to a large portion of his 
hearers. Soon, an old school Presbyterian minister 
came out of the store and as soon as he saw me he 
came to me and shook hands. His first question 
was : '' Is it true what I hear, that you have become 
a Roman Catholic?" I answered: "It is true." 
His next question was : " Do you not think it is a 
strange thing for the son of a Protestant minister 
in this enlightened nineteenth century to become a 



156 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

Roman Catholic ? " I answered that I did not think 
so and referred him to many others who had taken 
the same step who were better, more learned, and 
more distinguished than I could ever hope to be. 
He then turned to the young Kentuckian and asked 
him if he did not think it strange. He promptly 
replied that he did not; in fact, he had always had 
great admiration for the Catholic Church. The 
young man, who was not so young as I — I was then 
about nineteen years of age — asked me a number of 
sympathetic questions which I gladly answered. I 
never saw him again, but I am afraid that like so 
many others he was satisfied to behold with admira- 
tion from the outside the beautiful walls of the City 
of God on earth. The few Catholics who lived in 
the neighborhood of the village seemed more aston- 
ished than the others. The village and surround- 
ing country had a population almost entirely of old 
line Americans ; although my father had a second 
congregation some miles away composed entirely of 
Irish Orangemen. The leaders of these bigoted 
men had seemingly taken a liking to me, but I never 
learned what they said of me when they heard of 
my change. 

One beautiful Sunday afternoon, before I left 
home, I was strolling down one of the streets of the 
quiet village when I saw that Sunday school was 
being held in the Baptist Church. Although I had 
never before entered it I concluded to go in and 
hear what was being said. In a prominent part of 



REV. HIRAM FRANCIS FAIRBANKS 157 

the church the Baptist minister was teaching a Bible 
class. To my surprise I saw that one of the mem- 
bers of the class was a venerable looking patriarch 
with long white beard and hair. I had seen him only 
once before when in the very early morning in look- 
ing out of the window I saw him driving down the 
street and, stopping, he left a bag of apples at the 
door of a poor widow who had several children. 
He got away quickly so that he would not be seen 
by her. Before the Bible class was half over he de- 
liberately rose and quietly walked out of the church. 
As he passed me he gave me a sign to follow him, 
which I did as soon as I could pohtely do so. He 
was one of the most prominent and one of the rich- 
est men in the community, having mills, farms and 
goods in abundance. He had been one of the foun- 
ders of the communistic Fourier ite community at 
Ceresco, one of the most notable attempts at Com- 
munism in the United States. After its failure he 
had settled in this village. When I came out he 
told me that he wanted to talk with me and he in- 
vited me to walk home with him. When he saw 
me salute almost everybody we met he was sur- 
prised, and said : " I never speak to those common 
men; if I do they will want to talk, and in this way 
I should lose my time, for they have no ideas. This 
is the first time in years that I have been in a church. 
I went to-day because the Baptist minister adver- 
tised that he would teach the class and begin with 
the first verse of Genesis and the subject oi Crea- 



158 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

tion. But I soon found out that he did not know 
anything about his subject. Your father told me 
that you have become a CathoHc. I was glad to hear 
it; for I have been tending in that direction for 
twenty years. Come and see my paintings on evo- 
lution and the descent of man. I taught the present 
State Geologist all the geology he knows." He 
then showed me his living rooms, which werq curi- 
osity shops, and his paintings. He began with the 
lower animals and continued up through the higher 
forms of monkeys to- the crowning work, man. To 
me most of his ideas seemed materialism. He in- 
vited me to take dinner with him in a few days. I 
accepted the invitation and on the appointed day I 
arrived a few minutes before the dinner hour. He 
drove up just as I arrived. He told me he had been 
away some ten miles to attend Mass, that after Mass 
he had called on the priest, who had given him a 
child's catechism that from it he might learn the 
Christian doctrine. When I saw this venerable, 
proud old man, humbly beginning with a child's 
catechism, I thought to myself he is not far from 
the kingdom of God ; '' unless you become as little 
children you shall not enter the kingdom of God." 
But it was several years before he became a Cath- 
olic. He was received into the Church by my 
friend, Father Willard, also a convert to the faith, 
and many years after that, just before his death, 
he sent for Father Willard, who gave him the last 
Sacraments. 



REV. HIRAM FRANCIS FAIRBANKS 1 59 

To return to my own story : The time had now- 
come when I must obey the words : " Go forth out 
of thy country, and from thy kindred, and out of 
thy father's house, and come into the land which I 
shall shew thee." I went forth a voluntary exile 
from my father's house to go among strangers in 
the land of promise. I went forth with a desolate 
heart, leaving behind me a desolate home. I had 
obeyed the voice of my Lord calling to me, I had 
" left all things to follow Christ." It is the spirit 
of the Christian religion. The shadow of the cross 
was resting on my heart never to be lifted from it in 
this life. Besides my natural tendency to home- 
sickness, I felt vividly what this step meant for my 
whole future life. I will illustrate my meaning 
with an incident which will remain always in my 
memory, because in the impression I was not mis- 
taken. I was alone in my room looking over the 
clergy list in a Catholic directory. The names for 
the most part were so unaccustomed and foreign to 
me that my life exile was revealed to me in its full 
force, and I burst into tears. I wept long and bit- 
terly; yet many of those names afterwards became 
very dear to me; in fact, among the dearest on 
earth. But at that time I could not disguise to my- 
self the fact that however small the race prejudice 
in my own heart, however cosmopolitan I might be- 
come, however fair and broad-minded I might be 
towards others, a large number of them would never 
be the same towards me. In this I was partly mis- 



l6o BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

taken, for I must say in truth that a very great num- 
ber of others have treated me with broad minds and 
warm, generous hearts. I reaHzed as I have ever 
since reaHzed, that while I had become a part of the 
great majority of Christians, I had joined a hope- 
less minority in all things else. Outside the church 
my religion w^as against me, inside the church, race 
prejudice and stronger still race and national pride, 
love and loyalty were at least negatively against me. 
The ordinary man knows little about the virtues and 
achievements of other races and people, but he 
knows, or ought to know, a great deal about his own. 
And even where he has knowledge of both his eyes 
are closed to the former and wide open to the latter. 
Fifty or more years ago I am inclined to think that 
the American convert was made too much of; since 
that time I believe he has been made too little of; 
for in these days the race demand for representa- 
tion in politics, religion, and everything else is very 
great, and when the four quarters of Europe are 
represented in the church in America, the American 
convert represents a very small minority. The re- 
sult has been that the vast millions of old line Amer- 
ican non-Catholics have no one in the church es- 
pecially interested in them, no one to represent them, 
no one whose traditions, history, customs and asso- 
ciations are interwoven with theirs to gain their 
confidence and bring them in large numbers to the 
Catholic faith, so that the vast bulk of the non- 
Catholic American people have remained as far 



REV. HIRAM FRANCIS FAIRBANKS i6l 

away from the church as they were a half century 
ago. But just now improvement is taking place in 
some directions, and within the last few years, with 
the blessing of the highest authority of the church, 
a movement of great importance has been started 
which promises to do much in preparing the field for 
an abundant harvest. May God bless the apostolic 
bands of missionaries established in so many parts 
of the country tO' give missions to non-Catholics. 

After all, the fact that the English race, and our 
own old line cosmopolitan American people have so 
little influence and part in directing the policies and 
work of the Catholic Church in these countries is 
largely their own fault, for our ancestors lost that 
right when they separated themselves from the 
church and took up arms against it, and we Ameri- 
can converts must suffer for the sins of our fore- 
fathers. 

When I became a Catholic my conversion was ab- 
solute and permanent. After the first six months 
no one ever mistrusted that I was a convert. Noth- 
ing ever did or could scandalize me. I could never 
bear to hear people say that converts are better than 
other Catholics, or, for that matter, worse. From 
the day I became a Catholic until now I have never 
for one instant doubted that my step was absolutely 
correct. In all my fifty years of Catholic life^ — 
forty-six of which have been in the priesthood — 
I have never doubted for one moment the certainty 
of my position. 



l62 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

There is a God; and I am absolutely certain of 
the necessity of divine revelation for the knowledge 
and fulfillment of man's destiny. I am certain be- 
yond doubt that such revelation has been made. I 
am absolutely sure that the truths of such revelation 
in order to be efifective must be made known to man 
in all ages with infallible certainty. Such an in- 
fallible teaching authority would be of little use if 
it were subject for centuries to the divisions of 
Christendom or the malice of men. It must be an 
ever-living, infallible teaching authority such as is 
alone the successor of St. Peter, the Roman Pontiff. 
If his infallibility depended on his learning, wisdom 
or sanctity I should pause ; but when it depends on 
neither his learning, his wisdom nor his piety, but 
on the promises, wisdom and power of God, I must 
accept it, or lose my faith and trust in God. 

After becoming a Catholic, I lived for a few 
months with the Jesuit Fathers in Chicago. Here 
a strange and desolate sorrow took hold of me. I 
walked the streets of Chicago, and saw successful 
men of the world hurrying tO' their business, the 
•rich riding past in their carriages, the crow^ds of 
laborers flocking to their work; and in my distress 
I cried out within myself, O, is it possible that all 
these are going down to hell ! I told my depressing 
thought to Father Damien, the great missionary. 
He said to me : '^ We know that the Catholic 
Church alone is Christ's true church, and we are 
bound to belong to it; but we do not know how 



REV. HIRAM FRANCIS FAIRBANKS 163 

many of these people are in good faith; God only 
knows that. Leave them to God." And in my 
mind I have since added: God alone knows His 
uncovenanted mercies. At first I was doubtful 
whether I should join a religious order or become 
a secular priest. Before I became a Catholic I in- 
tended to become a missionary to India. After my 
conversion to the Catholic faith I did not at first 
change my intention. It was partly for that reason 
that I thought of becoming a Jesuit. Father 
Damien convinced me that work in the great Amer- 
ican field for the salvation of our great English 
speaking race was of far greater importance than 
work in India, but he very much desired to have me 
enter the Society of which he was such a faithful 
and zealous member. I first spent some time in 
St. Louis University, but after correspondence with 
Father Hecker of the Paulists, and after a second 
retreat, I decided to become a secular priest. I then 
entered St. Francis Theological Seminary near Mil- 
waukee, where I was ordained to the priesthood 
January 29, 1868, when I was not quite twenty- 
three years of age. 

I have been in my present parish more than 
thirty-two years. In the earlier years of my priest- 
hood I delivered in various places by invitation of 
the pastors many controversial lectures. I now 
consider that I often made the mistake so common 
to some converts of being very severe on Prot- 
estantism. It came from my intense interest in and 



1 64 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

sorrow for its followers. They were my own coun- 
trymen, kinsfolk and forefathers who I considered 
had been deprived of their divine heritage by a ter- 
rible crime. But those whom I desired to benefit, 
with the prejudices implanted in their hearts by 
more than three hundred years of passionate and 
bitter controversy and strife, for the most part will 
never be able to appreciate the great distinction be- 
tween Protestantism and its adherents. The letter 
of the Holy Father to those who are to give mis- 
sions to non-Catholics points out a better way. 
That better way which is pointed out to us is prayer, 
explanation, apostolic preaching and writing, and 
in all things the charity of Jesus Christ. 

After my forty-six years in the priesthood and 
loyalty to the Catholic Church, the spouse of Christ, 
the mere suggestion of anything else for me but 
the Catholic faith would be a suggestion that hell 
might gain a soul destined for God and heaven. 
But as I have become old in that faith, which is my 
hope for eternity, I have become more desirous that 
all men should belong to it. I cannot close my eyes 
to the terrible results of the divisions oi Christen- 
dom. The unity of the Church and the unity of 
so-called Christendom are different things. The 
church and the faith are one and must ever be one, 
but so-called Christendom is divided because a large 
part of it is separated from the divine center of 
unity. It is time for us on both sides to '' let the 
dead bury their dead." Nor should we continue- to 



REV. HIRAM FRANCIS FAIRBANKS 165 

dig out of their graves dead issues which long since 
should have been forgotten, nor to open old wounds 
which long since should have been healed. Both 
sides have made mistakes and have committed faults 
which no longer should have any real bearing on 
the merits O'f the case. 

Christian men are everywhere seeking Christian 
unity, but they will never gain it except in that di- 
vine center of the unity established by Jesus Christ. 
As St. Cyprian well writes in Epistle 73, in the 
Enghsh translation ']2, page 381 : " For first the 
Lord gave that power to Peter upon whom He built 
the Church and whence he established and showed 
the source of unity." 

To-day Europe is rent and divided because men 
have rent and torn asunder the mystical body of 
Christ. Resultant misfortunes have fallen not only 
on those nations and peoples that have separated 
themselves from the Holy See, but even on those 
that have remained united to it. Italy, the very 
home of the Popes, having entered on a career of 
plunder, injustice and sacrilege, has become the 
domicile of discord and wide-spread irreligious 
propaganda. France is a sad spectacle of indiffer- 
ence and infidelity, a devastated vineyard of the 
Lord where men have learned to hate even the name 
of Christ. A nation so conservative as Spain is 
threatening to break down the Christian barriers 
that keep out the deluge which has destroyed the 
religious faith and life of her sister nations. There 



l66 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

is a volcano under every so-called Latin nation of 
Europe which at any time is liable to belch forth 
fiercer and wider destruction than any yet experi- 
enced. Does anyone imagine that if England, Ger- 
many, and the United States were united to the See 
of Peter, the Holy Father would remain a prisoner 
in the Vatican, and would continue to be insulted 
in the very capital of Christianity? Who imagines 
that France would dare to raise her sacrilegious 
hands against the churches and altars of God and 
the anointed priests of Christ if the other powerful 
nations of Europe and America were joined in 
Catholic union with the Successor of the Fisher- 
man ? In that portion of Germany where the Holy 
See is rejected and in England and the United 
States what is the condition of religion? Indiffer- 
ence, irreligion, and infidelity are so widespread 
that millions no longer believe in the Incarnation of 
the Son of God, and many more millions no longer 
worship Him. The overwhelming majorities in 
these lands, although they are called Christian coun- 
tries, never enter a house where God is adored, al- 
though tens of thousands of these places are built 
by the hundreds of jarring and contradictory sects 
into which Protestantism has been divided. The 
Christian religion is fast becoming a, by-word of re- 
proach with the majority of the people of the prin- 
cipal countries of Europe and North America. 
Here in the United States there are not even one 
million Anglican communicants, while in our own 



REV. HIRAM FRANCIS FAIRBANKS 167 

church there is a CathoHc population of only about 
15,000,000, nearly all of whom are immigrants or 
their children or grandchildren, who have come to 
our shores from Catholic lands within the last sev- 
enty-five years. If we had kept our own which 
should belong to us by immigration and natural in- 
crease we should have not less than twenty-five or 
thirty millions instead. Therefore, notwithstand- 
ing our present greater numbers, coming from nat- 
ural increase and other causes, as religious bodies in 
relation to each other we stand almost exactly 
where we stood three hundred years ago, but the 
losses of both sides to heresy and unbelief have been 
enormous. A few smaller nations and provinces of 
these two continents may have done better, but they 
exercise no great influence on the destinies of the 
world. 

The foregoing are not the worst results of our 
divisions. Two-thirds of the nations of the earth 
still sit in " darkness and the shadow O'f death." 
One billion human beings walk in the way that leads 
to death, and every year hundreds of thousands go 
down to their graves unredeemed by the blood of 
Christ. We can point to only one nation or people 
— the Philippine Islands — that has been converted 
to Christianity since the unfortunate events of the 
sixteenth century, and they were converted by a na- 
tion that has never let heresy come within its bor- 
ders to divide and destroy the religious belief of its 
people. Let us bow our heads in humiliation when 



l68 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

we remember the records of the small Christian 
church of the Apostolic age and the triumphs of the 
church in after ages. But what a great work could 
be accomplished in our day by a united Christen- 
dom under all the favoring influences of our times. 
With the nations of Europe and our own united 
in missionary work sending forth their armies of 
missionaries, representing an undivided church, 
preaching '' One Lord, one Faith and one Baptism," 
in all the fullness of Christ's revelation, and with 
all the vast sums of money that in our age could 
be raised and used for education, charity, and re- 
ligion, backed by all that powerful influence which 
the foremost nations of the Christian w^orld could 
exert, the present state of affairs could not last long, 
until the " kingdoms of this world would become 
the kingdom of Our Lord and His Christ." 

The spouse of Christ, the divine church, is perfect 
as she came from the hands of God: "Thou art 
all fair, O, my love, and there is not a spot in thee." 
The human side of the church is not perfect. Well 
did Cardinal Newman write : " Men, not angels, 
are the priests of the gospel." If the ministers of 
the sanctuary even are not as perfect as the angels 
how much less than angels will be the greater num- 
ber of the agents and agencies which the church 
must employ in all its vast and varied work. The 
human side of the church is made up of the human 
race coming to it from all the nations of the earth. 
As men are her human agencies to carry on her 



p 



REV. HIRAM FRANCIS FAIRBANKS 169 

divine work she needs all the races of men : the so- 
called Latin races, the Germanic races, the Slavic 
races, and the great Celtic-Norman-Anglo-Saxon 
races, spread over the earth, the backbone of two of 
the greatest nations of the world, as well as all those 
Oriental races, so vast in numbers, which instead of 
being a peril should become a blessing to mankind. 
In saying all this I cannot agree with the state- 
ment of some of our Anglican friends that Rome 
has retained in her communion only the Latin races 
of Europe and their descendants; such a statement 
is in no sense true. She yet retains half or more 
than half of the Germanic race, as one will readily 
see when he remembers the millions of German 
Catholics in Austria, Bavaria, parts of Switzerland, 
the Rhine provinces and the majority of the people 
of Belgium and two-fifths of Holland, and the de- 
scendants of all these in other lands. And, not- 
withstanding the repressive acts of Russia which 
have kept so many Slavs from union with the See 
of Peter, millions of the most vigorous, intelligent, 
and liberty-loving branches of the Slavic race are 
in communion with Rome. Besides these, the large 
majority of the ancient and splendid Celtic race are 
among the most loyal and faithful children of the 
Holy See that the world has ever known. The 
Scandinavian countries and three-fifths of Holland 
no longer admit the primacy of Peter, and three of 
our most powerful nations, the German Empire, 
England and the United States, are classed as Prot- 



I70 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

estant powers because five-eighths of the popula- 
tion of the two last named call themselves Prot- 
estants. The Anglicans do not number in the Brit- 
ish Isles, in America and the Provinces in excess of 
16,000,000 members. They have scarcely a million 
communicants in these United States out of a po'p- 
ulation of 90,000,000. In England they are stronger 
and more influential, numbering something like 13,- 
000,000 members. To me it is not so much what 
the Anglican body is now in its isolated position as 
what it would be in communion with Rome. We 
must begin somewhere in this great work of re- 
union and I know no better or more hopeful place 
to begin than to seek reconciliation between Rome 
and the Anglican communion which once belonged 
to the Holy See as one of its most faithful adher- 
ents; which to-day contains such a large body of 
catholic minded men and women whose strong and 
earnest desire is to- return to that ancient union with 
which nearly a thousand years of their most sacred 
associations and glorious history are interwoven. 
The great English speaking race having a popula- 
tion of more than one hundred millions needs Rome 
and Rome needs the great, wide-spread, vigorous 
northern race. Under the conditions of the age in 
which w^e live Christendom once more united under 
the See of Peter would remain united for all future 
time. A new spirit would animate the nations, and 
the Church would put on the festal robes of the 
bride of Christ. 



REV. HIRAM FRANCIS FAIRBANKS 17I 

I have many reasons to believe that the Vicar of 
Christ favors, and will assist, and make the way 
easy for all those corporate movements which give 
hopes of ending in union with the Apostolic See of 
Rome. Late events are indications of this good 
will and they accord with the whole past history of 
the Church. The movement has begun and let us 
pray that it may extend and expand until it includes 
whole dioceses and nation-wide communities, until 
all catholic minded men shall find peace in that 
unity for which Christ the Redeemer prayed. 

But that I may not be misunderstood I will add 
for myself that I would not be outside of the fold of 
Christ's flock which He confided to Peter for one 
hour in exchange for the whole universe; for in 
that hour I might die. 



THE REV. SIGOURNEY W. FAY, A.B., 

CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 

Sometime Archdeacon and Canon of Fond du Lac; and 

formerly Professor of Dogmatic and Moral Theology 

at Nashotah House, Wis. 

I have been thinking over the request to write 
something about my state of mind since my con- 
version to the Catholic religion. In order to make 
myself intelligible, I shall almost have to go back to 
the beginning and tell how I became a Catholic ; for 
one can hardly understand the after-effects of con- 
version unless one understood the motives which 
led to conversion. 

I think from my very earliest years I had an un- 
conscious drawing to the Roman Catholic religion. 
I remember having my picture taken when I was 
five years old and of hearing one of the family re- 
mark that I looked like a little Roman Catholic 
priest, but on the other hand, as I grew up and took 
an interest in religious affairs, I was taught that I 
was already a Catholic, that the Episcopal Church 
and the Roman Catholic Church were parts of the 
one Church founded by our Lord and that the dif- 
ferences between them were very few and not very 

172 




REV. SIGOURNEY W. FAY, A.B. 173 

important. Of course, I knew that all Episco- 
palians did not believe this, but the Episcopalians 
whom I knew believed it, and the atmosphere of my 
own family was very like that of a devout Catholic 
household. 

When I was in the University of Pennsylvania, I 
first began to feel some alarm with regard to my po- 
sition. Studying history as I did under some very 
competent professors, it did not seem to me that the 
Supremacy of the Pope was as modern a doctrine 
as I was taught to believe, nor that a continuity be- 
tween the Pre-reformation and Post-reformation 
Church of England could be very easily proved. 
Moreover, I began to think about the notes of the 
Church, and the problem of how the Greek, the 
Roman Catholic and the Anglican, while three sep- 
arate and distinct bodies, could be one Church, 
seemed to admit of no rational solution. At this 
time, however, I was going to Confession to a clergy- 
man, a man of the greatest sanctity of life, and to 
him all these questions seemed to be temptations. 
As I was certain that he was a very holy man and 
equally certain that I was not, I abided by his opin- 
ion and tried tO' put the matter out of my mind. 

Moreover, I was rather intimate at that time with 
an Anglican clergyman who was regarded as an au- 
thority in theological matters and he put intellectual 
obstacles in the way of my becoming a Roman Cath- 
olic, which for years I was unable to surmount. In 
the first place, I was asked how I could possibly ad- 



174 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

mit that the Roman Catholic Church was the whole 
Church since the Roman Church had so manifestly 
added to the Faith. The Immaculate Conception 
and the Infallibility of the Pope were neither of 
them in tradition, and if I admitted those dogmas on 
the authority of the Church I would have to admit 
that the Roman Catholic Church had changed the 
Faith. If I tried to answer that by pleading that 
Christian dogma might develop, I was told that the 
development of dogma was a modern expedient in- 
vented by Cardinal Newman to account for the great 
and notorious difference between the teaching of 
the primitive and the Roman Catholic Church of 
to-day. 

All this time I was struggling with a feeling that 
I had a vocation to the priesthood, and as it seemed 
that my lot was to be cast in the Anglican Church 
and that if I left it I should only be going from one 
set of difficulties to another, I determined at last to 
take Orders. I was accepted by the late Doctor 
Grafton, Bishop of Fond du Lac, and just after my 
ordination to the diaconate, he took me with him 
on his journey to Russia. This journey was taken 
with the hope o-f bringing about a good understand- 
ing between the Russian Church and the Protestant 
Episcopal Church of America, but I soon found that 
the Russians were going to be extremely cautious 
in committing themselves. Nothing could be kinder 
nor more polite nor more truly Christian than their 
attitude to us as individuals, but as to anything 



REV. SIGOURNEY W. FAY, A.B. 175 

definite, it was unobtainable unless the Anglican 
Church admitted seven councils, seven Sacraments, 
transubstantiation, invocation of the Saints, and 
took the Filioque out of the Creed. No reunion was 
possible until the Anglican Church should do that, 
and even then before reunion could be brought 
about, it would be necessary to settle the vexed ques- 
tion of Anglican Orders. This disturbed me not a 
little, for it seemed to show two things. If we 
were the same Church as the Orientals, union ought 
not to be so difficult, and secondly, all that the Ori- 
ental Church demanded of us, with the exception 
of th'e excision of the Filioque, I recognized and 
had always recognized tO' be necessary parts of the 
Catholic Faith and, therefore, the attitude of the 
Russian Church toward us could mean only one 
thing, namely, that the Anglican Church did 
not teach these Catholic doctrines, but only per- 
mitted some of her members to hold them, 
which was a very different thing, and it was 
as intolerable to me as it was to them that the 
Real Presence, for instance, should be a mere 
pious opinion. But again I found that while we 
professed to believe more than the Anglican Church 
really believed, that the faith of the Russian Church 
was greater in extent than in the dogmas which 
she actually professed to hold, for I found, for 
instance, that in her offices the Immaculate Con- 
ception of the Blessed Virgin was plainly taught 
and these offices go back, as everyone knows, to 



176 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

remotest antiquity. However, although we had not 
a great deal to encourage us, still we were not dis- 
couraged and in my heart I think I hoped that 
something would happen which might separate the 
High Church from the Low Church and Broad 
Church elements in the Episcopal Church, and that 
afterwards a reconciliation would be easy., 

So, the next June, in perfectly good faith, I re- 
ceived the Anglican priesthood. It was said at the 
time, I do not know if it were true, that I was the 
first clergyman since the Reformation to receive 
the Anglican priesthood wath the full ceremonial 
of the Catholic Church; the vesting, the anointing 
of the hands, and so forth, and my ordination took 
place in the midst of a solemn pontifical mass. 

After my ordination, I went back to Doctor 
Grafton's diocese and a month later I was ap- 
pointed by him Archdeacon of Fond du Lac. This 
was the happiest time of my ministry in the Angli- 
can Church. I lived w^th the Bishop, for whom 
I shall always have the affection of a son. De- 
spite his curious and inveterate prejudice against 
the authority of the Holy See, Bishop Grafton was 
a man of extraordinary sanctity and learning and 
\\dth a character of the utmost sweetness and ami- 
ability. He and I saw things at that time from 
very much the same standpoint and our days w^ere 
full of work and of happy plans for the future. In 
the midst of all our work for the reunion of the 
Anglican and Orthodox Churches, we received a 



REV. SIGOURNEY W. FAY, A.B. 177 

great shock. The Reverend Doctor Irvine, an 
Anglican clergyman, went over to the Orthodox 
Church and desiring to become a priest, wsls re- 
ordained. Here was a practical answer to our 
proposals. Submit and we will take you. How 
terrible a disappointment this was both to the 
Bishop and myself, I shall never forget. We 
wrote, we telegraphed, we used every bit of influ- 
ence we had with the Archbishop in New York to 
prevent the reordination, but the Archbishop, even 
if he tvere willing, was unable to accede to our 
* requests. He could not receive Mr. Irvine to 
priestly functions without reordination. He could 
not refuse reordination to a man who was willing 
to accept it, who desired to be a priest and whom 
he considered fit for that ministry. 

My disappointment was like the tumbling down 
of a house about one's ears. It seemed impossible 
to remain in communion with those whom w^e con- 
sidered Catholics and on the other hand, we re- 
mained in communion with men whose heresy was 
notorious. 

I think that it was about this time that I first be- 
gan to regard with alarm my communion with 
misbelievers and I think ultimately it was this which 
drove me out of the Anglican Church. It became 
intolerable for me to- think that I was in open 
communion with men whoi denied the Real Pres- 
ence, the Infallibility of the Church, the seven 
Sacraments, and so on. If these men had hekl 



1/8 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

these heterodox opinions secretly it would have 
been one thing, but they held them openly and un- 
rebuked, and I came to see that it was going to be 
impossible to prevent open denials of even the 
fundamental points of the Christian religion. 

Just after the frustration of our hopes of union 
with the East I was elected Professor of Dogmatic 
Theology at Xashotah, to take the place vacated 
by the consecration of the Right Reverend Dr. 
Webb as Bishop Coadjutor of ^lilwaukee, and 
although I resigned my Archdeaconry, the. Bishop 
gave me a stall in his cathedral as Canon in place 
of it. At Nashotah I had plenty of time to think. 
I came to see that tradition need not be explicitly 
written out in every age. I had thought that the 
Immaculate Conception was not in tradition, but I 
had found it in the Lex Orandi of the Eastern 
Church. And when I came to look more closely 
into the Eastern Fathers I found Papal Infallibility 
was the necessarj^ outcome of what the Greek Fath- 
ers had said, as for instance, St. Irenaeus, St. Theo- 
dore, the Studite, and the Fathers at Chalcedon. It 
seemed far more easy to explain the difficulties 
brought out against Papal Infallibility from eccle- 
siastical history than to explain how the Catholic 
Church could exist without the note of unity. But 
although I began to see the modem Roman Catholic 
Church reflected more and more in the primitive 
Church, I was still very far from being a Catholic, 
for unconsciously I was using my private judgment 



REV. SIGOURNEY W. FAY, A.B. 179 

on tradition just as a Protestant uses his private 
judgment on Scripture. I did not stop to think that 
I was reducing the function of the Church from 
that of a divine teacher to that of a mere witness. 

One day, however, I was suddenly enHghtened. 
I was getting up a lecture in my study and I came 
across a passage in St. Irenaeus which I must have 
read over and over many times before, without see- 
ing what it really meant. In this passage, St. Ire- 
naeus spoke of the Bishops as having charisma veri- 
tatis, a gift of truth. They were teachers as well 
as witnesses and th'ey were protected in their teach- 
ing as well as in their witnessing. In connection 
with this passage, that other passage of Saint Ire- 
naeus came home with great force, in which he says 
every church must agree with the Roman Church 
because of its greater power. I saw in a moment 
what this must mean, like a flash of light. I said 
to myself that I and all other Anglicans were mere 
patristic Pirotestants. If all the Churches of the 
world must agree with the Roman Church into 
which, as TertuUian says, the Apostles with their 
blood poured their doctrine, and if the body of 
Bishops in agreement with the Pope possessed a 
gift of truth and were not mere witnesses, then 
whatever they should teach as a matter of faith 
must be in tradition. And for anyone who desired 
to belong to the Church which our Lord has set 
up, it was really not necessary to go any further. 
If I were not able to see it in tradition in that case 



l8o BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

I had an opportunity of making an act of faith. 
It might be necessary to show the compatibiHty of 
the doctrines of the Church with tradition, to those 
who were without. It could never be necessary 
to show it to those who were within or who desired 
to be within. 

It was just after this that the general Convention 
met at Richmond and passed the open pulpit canon. 
This canon upset many Anglican clergymen because 
they thought it an attack upon Orders, but to me the 
trouble was far deeper than one of Orders. The 
Catholic Church is and must be exclusive. She 
claims an exclusive right to teach. No one can 
teach who is not her minister, her representative, 
and accredited by her. By admitting that any 
Christian man, by which the canon meant any bap- 
tized Christian, whether he were a dissenting min- 
ister or not, could be permitted to teach in the 
pulpits of the Anglican Church, the Protestant 
Church cast away all pretentions to an exclusive 
authority to teach. 

From that time, it was only a question of months. 
I could not act myself and I should never advise any- 
one else to act hastily upon their convictions. Time 
must be taken for those convictions to- solidify. 
Our emotions have so much to do with our state of 
mind that to act when one is excited is always dan- 
gerous. So I went on for several months, gradually 
relinquishing parts of my ministry as I found my 
conviction growing, and having left Nashotah in 



REV. SIGOURNEY W. FAY, A.B. i8l 

March and resigned my Canonry in April, I made 
my submission to the CathoUc Church on the 4th 
of June, 1908. 

Since my conversion to the CathoHc Church, I 
think I could sum up my impressions in a few words. 
Many converts seem to enjoy intensely the first 
months of their lives as Catholics. They seem to 
be full of fervor and delighted with everything they 
see. Then afterwards their fervor dies down, the 
human element in the Church often scandalizes them 
and they become often very unhappy. I think this 
is the reason why some converts go- back. My 
own case was exactly the reverse. Almost all the 
difficulties that a Catholic could ever experience, 
I experienced during my first year in the Church, 
and yet during that time, which was a most un- 
happy time, though I had many difficulties I never 
had a doubt and I never for a moment believed I 
could leave the Catholic Church without losing my 
soul. To me the Catholic Church is something 
which is better loved the better she is known. Her 
wonderful attractions are not upon the surface, and 
those who come over to her and are enraptured 
with her, are generally not enraptured with her real 
excellences; it is in the daily use of the Sacraments 
that one sees their enormous po^wer and grace, and 
that one realizes that she has to give to her children 
what no one else can give. The certainty with 
which the Catholic faith is held, grows deeper every 
day in the sense that the mind adheres more and 



l82 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

more firmly to the truth of the Cathohc reHgion ; and 
the marvellous way in which God witnesses to her 
divine mission in the depth and character of the 
supernatural light which He produces within her, 
binds one more and more closely to her, as to the 
only ark of safety. 

I can not be sufficiently thankful that as an 
Anglican I saw the very best that the Anglican 
Church can produce, and that through my acquaint- 
ance with the Russian Church, I saw the very best 
which the Schismatic Greek Church can produce, 
and that as a Catholic priest I have been thrown a 
great deal in contact with the more supernatural 
side of Catholic piety, for it enables me to bear wit- 
ness that the gifts and graces which God bestows 
upon His only Church He gives to no other body, 
that communion with the Apostolic See is not only 
the guarantee of orthodoxy, but that it is also the 
guarantee of those gifts and graces with which Our 
Divine Lord adorns His bride. This does not mean 
that I can not recognize the real excellences in 
Anglicanism, the piety and holiness and goodness 
of many of its members, nor does it mean that one 
must close one's eyes to the sanctity of many mem- 
bers of the Russian Church; but it does mean that 
experience has taught the writer of this article that 
there is a power, a brightness, a convincing character 
in the grace bestowed in the Catholic and Roman 
Church which is not bestowed anywhere else, and 
that this is what I think our Lord meant when He 



J 



REV. SIGOURNEY W. FAY, A.B. 183 

said, '' By their fruits, ye shall know them " ; that 
however great the scandals of the Church may be, 
if, as our opponents say, there are such scandals, 
they are but exemplifications of the maxim that the 
corruption of the best is the worst, whereas the su- 
pernatural life of the Church is one of the greatest, 
if not the greatest proof of her divine origin, of 
the divine protection which is granted to her; and 
of the presence of the Holy Spirit which dwells 
within her, and which will remain with her until 
Time is no more. 



GODFREY R FERRIS, 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 

English Lawyer (Solicitor) ; son of Rev. Canon Ferris, Gon- 
alston Rectory, Nottinghamshire, England; at present 
connected with Georgetown College, D. C. 

I have been a Catholic for over nine years and I 
do not for one moment regret the tremendous step 
I took on the ist of May, 1904. My incorporation 
into the mystical body of Christ was to me the end 
of religious controversy. I say the end, because, 
after that step was taken, Christianity proved to 
be, and still so remains, not a set of doctrines dia- 
metrically opposed to each other, but a guide, point- 
ing out a clear and a definite path, the course of 
which leads straight on to a well defined goal. To 
me, as to all serious minded Catholics, the Church 
is the infallible, unchanging voice of God to men. 
She commands with a clear voice, and her loyal 
children humbly obey, assured that when she speaks, 
it is with the mouth of her Divine Spouse. God 
hath spoken through her, and we can say concern- 
ing her utterances like the inspired psalmist, " The 
word of Thy mouth is dearer unto me than thou- 
sands of gold and silver." 

But this is but the more comprehensive view of the 

184 



GODFREY F. FERRIS 185 

Catholic Church. Our Divine Lord speaks to us 
all individually by Sacramental grace, and this is 
what as non-Catholics we could never grasp. In 
the Anglican Communion, I was ever searching, 
ever asking, praying for the Holy Ghost to enlighten 
my soul, hoping against hope that sooner or later, 
the light of union with Christ would burst upon me 
and I should experience a sense of rest and of peace 
that passeth understanding. During my restless 
mental meanderings I had often stopped in the 
streets and watched the open air meetings of the 
Salvation Army and of other religious denomina- 
tions, and I often wondered what they meant when 
they said they had found salvation; when they said 
they experienced an ecstasy of joy and gladness that 
did not fade. I wondered also at the experiences 
described by the members of the Pentecostal League, 
who believe they have but to pray for the gift of 
the Holy Ghost, and that He will then lead them to 
Jesus Christ, and when once they have found Him 
in their hearts, all their sins are washed away and 
they experience full peace. 

But after studying, as I did, very carefully both 
the Bible and Church History, as w^ell as many 
other enlightening works, I saw that the religion 
of Jesus Christ was a very different thing to that 
portrayed both by the Anglican Church to which 
I belonged, and by all the multitudinous sects that 
everywhere prevail. And after much perplexity 
and mental weariness, combined with earnest prayer 



l86 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

and searching, I at last found my way into the true 
Fold of Jesus Christ, and my heart was filled with 
joy and gladness. I had found the true Church, 
the straight and narrow way that leads to eternal 
life; I knew that I was now really a member of 
Christ, and that here at last I could begin to sanctify 
my soul. I have never regretted the step I then took 
and God grant I never shall — I find in the Catholic 
Church the means of my salvation and of my sancti- 
fication; and I know that by a right use of such 
means, therein provided, I shall save my soul at the 
last day. 

But, to resume the line of thought from which I 
temporarily diverged, there are comparatively few 
of the members of these various sects who think 
or profess to think that they have found Jesus 
Christ in His fullness. And even those who do 
so profess, have to admit that their views on doc- 
trines of religion are subjected to perpetual change. 
They seem almost to profess to be infallible in 
themselves, but they do not appear to realize that 
their infallibility is perpetually undergoing a change, 
and when it does so change, they still seem to think 
that their own opinions are infallible just the same. 
No! Protestants are ever asking, ever searching, 
for the truth that is always at their door, but which 
door, for some reason or other they can not or will 
not open so it can gain admittance. 

But in the Catholic Church, it is so different. 
The Catholic realizes that he is a living member of 



GODFREY F. FERRIS 187 

the Church ; that he has been incorporated into it by- 
baptism and that he imbibes from it its very hfe 
blood. He is a member of the great Mystical Body, 
and the fountains of grace are ever flowing like 
streams beside him. His position, then, is not like 
that of the non-Catholic. The latter is ever search- 
ing, ever asking for spiritual graces without being 
able to receive anything very definite or tangible in 
return. The Catholic asks, and then receives from 
the treasures that he finds close at hand and around 
him. The Protestant looks up and cries to the un- 
seen God of Heaven for a realization of divine 
grace within his soul, but the Catholic looks up to 
God in Heaven and then drinks from the channels 
of divine grace that God has placed at his disposal 
here on earth ; means of grace which He has placed 
in such a manner that all men may get in touch with 
them, provided they fulfill the requisite but very 
simple conditions* 

And SO', the Catholic finds our Divine Lord on 
earth, and by the medium of Holy Church he can 
come into intimate contact with Him. We know 
that He is truly and substantially present in His 
Body, His Soul, and His Divinity in the Blessed 
Sacrament of the Altar, although veiled from human 
sight under the appearance of bread and wine. In 
Holy Communion He strengthens us, although we 
do not always experience an ecstasy of feeling. 
There are times when that ecstasy is felt to a 
greater or less degree, but ordinarily, as in my own 



l88 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

case, it is a more quiet, strengthening influence, 
helping one to fight the daily battle of life. 

When we go to confession in a proper disposi- 
tion, and the priest pronounces the absolution, we 
know that it is Jesus Christ who is pronouncing it 
through the instrumentality of the priest. When 
the priest lifts up the Monstrance containing the 
Blessed Sacrament, and blesses the congregation, we 
know that it is Our Lord Himself who is blessing 
us, although it is by the hands of the priest that 
He is upHfted. 

In the same way, when the priest offers the Holy 
Sacrifice, we know that it is our hidden but really 
present Saviour who is offering Himself — repre- 
senting the great Sacrifice of Calvary by means of 
which the sins of men are purged away. At the 
conclusion of the Holy Mass, the priest blesses the 
people and they feel that it is Christ who is blessing 
them through his instrumentality. When the priest 
in the name of Jesus Christ blesses a house or any 
edifice, or any article of devotion, it is in reality 
Christ Himself who is blessing the same. 

When the Sacred Host is carried through the 
streets on the beautiful Feast of Corpus Christi, it 
is our Divine Lord who is passing, the same Lord 
who nearly two thousand years ago walked the 
streets of Nazareth and of Jerusalem, healing the 
sick, cleansing the lepers and casting out devils — 
even the same Lord who now reigns in Heaven in 
the glory of His Father — Jesus Christ, the same 



GODFREY F. FERRIS 189 

yesterday, to-day and forever, whose word changes 
not, whose promises cannot fail. 

All these things sound strange to the uninitiated, 
and why? Because they cannot see the operation 
of the Holy Ghost in the Catholic Church. Once 
let them grasp the fact that the Paraclete — the 
Spirit of Truth — was given to the Church, the 
Bride of Christ, to abide with her forever; once let 
them realize that the Holy Ghost was to work in the 
world and in the hearts of men through the instru- 
mentality of men; once let them realize that the 
Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (the symbol of au- 
thority in divine things) were given to a man on 
earth, and that it was after the outpouring of the 
Holy Ghost at Pentecost that the instrumentality of 
the Keys began to be exercised; once let them realize 
that that authority has been exercised throughout the 
ages and that nations have bowed down to its sublim- 
ity ; once let them understand that all the marvellous 
sacramental graces which are at the disposal of the 
true ministers of Christ are not the institutions of 
men, but derive their life and vitality from the in- 
dwelling presence of the Holy Ghost, which was 
given once for all at Pentecost; in short, let them 
realize that the voice of the Catholic Church is the 
voice of the Holy Ghost on earth, and all the beau- 
tiful doctrines which she teaches, and has ever taught 
to men, will follow in the wake of that acknowledg- 
ment, as easily as will the coaches of a railway train 
follow the engine that draws them. 



I90 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

I think that the picture I have sketched of what I 
have found the Church to be, sufficiently answers 
the questions, '^ Are you satisfied?'' ''Are you 
happy ? " '' What has the Church been to you since 
you reached the path that Hes ' beyond the road to 
Rome ' ? " Go and teach all nations, said our Di- 
vine Lord, baptizing them in the name of the Father 
and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and Behold! 
I am with you all days even unto the consummation 
of the world. He that heareth you heareth Me, 
and he that receiveth Me receiveth Him that sent 
Me. 

In thee alone, O Holy Church of God, have I 
found the fulfillment of this divine promise and 
command. Deo Gratias ! 



"MARY MONICA FRANCIS." 

"Oh Ancient Beauty, too late have I known thee." 

It IS nearly thirty years since I was received into 
the Church, and still St. Augustine's cry rises to my 
lips day after day, as I realize the riches of my in- 
heritance. And even nov^ there mingles v^ith the 
gratitude a certain indignant resentment at having 
been deprived of my birthright through the critical 
years of youth and early womanhood, when all the 
most important questions of life had to be solved 
without its assistance. It was, however, my great 
good fortune to find at the beginning of my Cath- 
olic life, a director who bade me lay aside in great 
part what he called " the romance of religion," and 
devote all my energies to acquiring a sound knowl- 
edge of its fundamentals — Theology, Church His- 
tory and Catholic Ethics. This may appear a rather 
alarming list of subjects for a beginner who is not 
a student and who is leading a fully occupied life in 
the world, but my master spoke very authoritatively 
on the duty of devoting a short time each day to 
spiritual reading and promised me that, if I would 
be faithful in that regard, I should without any con- 
scious effort, learn in time all that a Catholic lay- 

191 



192 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

man's duty requires him to know of the greatest 
of all subjects, the true Religion. Here the choice 
of books required discrimination, and I can never 
be thankful enough for the care with which my in- 
structor selected them for me. Works of what the 
Church calls " private piety " were at once elim- 
inated. The Lives of the Saints were of course 
admitted, but only in the critical and learned ver- 
sions of Alban Butler and the Benedictine writers, 
who insist so much more on what may be called the 
drudgery of Saintship than on the extraordinary 
graces with which God so often crowns it. But 
preceding in importance even the examples of the 
Saints was the familiarization with the Liturgy, 
that inexhaustible treasure house from which is 
drawn the daily life of the Church, and in which 
all the sublime love and wisdom of God's dealings 
with man are spread before her children. 

Those w4io, like myself, received their early edu- 
cation from faithful and pious Anglicans, are apt 
to imagine, as I did, that they at least " know the 
Bible," w^hen they become Catholics. We did not, 
and that is one of the most fatal illusions of our 
separated brethren. The Bible, as taught and used 
by even advanced Ritualists, is only a collection of 
beautiful or awe inspiring facts and ennobling max- 
ims; there is neither logic nor sequence, for them, 
in the Old Testament, and its complete separation 
from the New Testament robs the very Gospels of 
their '' raison d'etre." Hence the muddled per- 



"MARY MONICA FRANCIS'* 193 

plexity of ideas with which many persons read the 
Holy Scriptures, and hence, too, the small relative 
profit they derive from the perusal. 

The times are happily past when the Catholic 
Church was accused of not permitting the Bible to 
be read, by private persons. Even her inveterate 
enemies should know, though they are seldom so 
honest as to" acknowledge, that numberless transla- 
tions of the whole, and of different parts of the 
Scriptures, into modern languages were published 
long before Luther's or even Wicliffe's time; and 
that, in spite of the laborious necessity of copying 
them by hand, they were widely disseminated among 
the educated classes — the only ones who could then 
read at all. 

The first thing the study of the Liturgy bestowed 
upon me was the better understanding of the Bible; 
and what a different book is the authorized Cath- 
olic Bible from the Protestant version! With its 
historical notes and doctrinal explanations O'f all the 
passages; with the beautiful books of Wisdom, Ec- 
clesiasticus, the Maccabees, etc., that were rejected 
by the self-styled Reformers, it becomes what it is 
meant to be, the foundation and source of true 
Catholic instruction. I cannot describe the sense of 
possession that came to me when I thus began to 
appropriate it, or the thrilling interest that it in- 
spired. I have said that the Church gave it to me, 
but it was some time before I realized the fact. I 
fancy there must be many who, like myself, have 



194 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

followed the Mass times without number, in the 
early days of their conversion, without apprehend- 
ing what one must call the " Leit Motif," the lead- 
ing idea, individual to the Mass, and drawn from 
the Bible, for every Sunday and Feast day in the 
year; as w^ell as for each week day of Advent and 
Lent and all the chief Octaves. The Church cycle 
from Advent Sunday to the last Sunday after Pente- 
cost is one long and lovely exposition of the truths 
of Christianity ; each Mass is composed, in its varia- 
ble portions, with such exquisite intuition and feel- 
ing (if it is not irreverent to apply these terms to 
the w^ork of men directly inspired by the Holy 
Spirit) that when one has read it through from 
Introit to Post Communion one is awed by the 
splendor that can only come from those divine har- 
monies of truth. 

Many are the roads by which we converts have 
approached the Church, but we have all had to pass 
through the one gate marked ^^ Faith." Each can 
but tell of his own experience, but we can say with 
certainty that whatever else was granted or with- 
held, complete and submissive Faith was ours when 
we took the great step. And I, at least, have found 
that that act of submission appeals so irresistibly to 
our Heavenly Father's Heart that He takes pleasure 
in rewarding it by the very fullness of intellectual 
joy. Every sense of the reasoning mind is so nobly 
satisfied that it looks back on the years of leanness 
behind it, in dumb wonder that it could have lived 



« 



"MARY MONICA FRANCIS^' 195 

at all on the meager disfigured fragments of truth 
which were all it had to feed on. The new knowl- 
edge brings also profound humility and a great retro- 
spective shame for past presumption. When one 
contemplates the perfect edifice now revealed, one 
knows not whether tO' weep or laugh at one's own 
crude efforts to create a logical philosophy of some 
kind, for one's own guidance, in the orphaned years 
that went before. 

There is one feature about Catholic truth which 
impresses me more the longer I live, and that is its 
exquisite diversity of application to each individual 
soul and mind. It has happened to me to watch 
many conversions, but I will only instance three, 
equally sincere and fruitful, as typical cases. One 
was that of a born skeptic who could not approach 
any subject except from a critical point of view. 
This person had, however, a strong sense of mental 
self-preservation, and after much reflection came to 
the conclusion that there must exist somewhere a 
faultless philosophy for the government of life. 
Having tried old and new systems and found flaws 
in them all, this woman (for, strange to say, my 
skeptic was a woman) coldly approached Catholi- 
cism and examined it — with the result, most unex- 
pected to herself, and acknowledged with a frank 
resentment, " because it was all so dreadfully up- 
setting," — that here was the flawless philosophy 
called Truth. Too honest to resist conviction, she 
instantly asked to be received into the Church — 



196 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

and has found perfect intellectual peace for thirty 
years. 

The second case was that of a brilliant, hungry- 
minded young man who, for a year or two in early 
childhood was thrown with Catholics, then snatched 
away from them and given an old-fashioned Prot- 
estant education. On escaping from the hands of 
his school masters his loathing for religion was 
such that for some twelve years he refused to set 
foot inside a church of any kind. Then sore troubles 
and trials beset him in the world, and across the 
long, long years came an echo of prayer and sweet- 
ness from the closed doors of the old nursery. He 
listened, remembered, called up scraps of the baby 
prayers and prayed them again. '^ Oh,'' he cried, 
in my hearing, ^^ my life has returned to me! I 
have been dead for twenty 5^ears — but now I will 
live! '' His instructor in the Faith could not go 
fast enough to please him. " What do I care about 
catechisms and dogma?" he said. "I know it is 
all true, because I knew it was true when I was a 
little child ; what has happened since is gone, wiped 
out — I have come home/' Ten years afterwards 
he told me that from the moment of his reception 
into the Church he dated the awakening of interest 
in life. "That is what is so wonderful," he said; 
" it is not only that one's soul is cleansed and saved, 
fed and strengthened — that would be enough to 
expect in all conscience — but here is a great glori- 
ous inexhaustible fund of what I cannot live with- 



" MARY MONICA FRANCIS '' 197 

out — and of the most thrilling interest ! Romance, 
History, Mysticism — the Church dominates in 
every subject that appeals to my mind. You cannot 
imagine Vv^hat it means to me to know that if I live 
to be a hundred I can never be bored again ! " 

The third instance was that of the daughter of a 
country clergyman, the youngest of a large family. 
" Mother taught the elder ones," she said, '' but 
when it came to me, she was tired, poor dear, and 
thought I would somehow get religion from the 
others — but I never learned anything ! " This girl 
got into the habit of dropping into a Catholic Church 
from time to time to enjoy the atmosphere of peace 
and the fine music, and one day heard a sermon 
which aroused in her a sudden terror of eternal per- 
dition. She immediately asked for instruction, and 
was received in due time. Hers was an emotional, 
rather untrained nature, but full of pure, warm im- 
pulses, and the sweetness and beauty of the Faith 
transformed her existence. In her case it. was not 
the mind that required food, but the heart, and this 
being so, I can honestly say, though the term may 
appear strange, that hers was the most successful 
conversion of the three. She found her wings at 
once; every incident and detail of life was transfig- 
ured with light and warmth; matters on which old 
Catholics could still discuss and argue were to her 
so clear from the very first that it amazed her that 
they should still appear dim to others. \\^ithout 
ever having heard of it she carried out St. Angus- 



198 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

tine's maxim: "Art thou afraid of God? Fly to 
His arms ! " Like a homing dove she did fly 
straight to the Sacred Heart, and royally has It re- 
warded that childlike trust. A married woman now 
— for all this happened years ago — her life, 
though assailed by material troubles, is one love 
song of joy and beauty, an inspiration and a main- 
stay to her family, and reaching out in charity and 
help to all whom she approaches. The once timid, 
ignorant girl has become one of the most valiant 
and successful promoters of the League of the 
Sacred Heart and the Apostleship of Prayer. 

" Oh, soul that hungerest for God, find thy way 
to Peter! " exclaimed the great Abbot of Solesmes, 
Dom Gueranger. That miraculous hunger shall 
ever increase, shall ever find food, and yet can never 
be satiated. Such good things has God prepared 
for those who love Him ! But we must take them — 
He will not sanctify us without our own coopera- 
tion. x\nd, after Faith and practice, comes the 
duty, incumbent on all converts, of at least a cer- 
tain amount of study of the treasure that has been 
bestow^ed upon them. Very little time suffices 
for this; a quarter of an hour of slow thoughtful 
reading each day will, in the course of years, put 
them in sure possession of unexpected wealth, will 
shed a glow of Interest on the dullest life, and pro^ 
vide their minds with happy occupation in sickness, 
loneliness, or old age. In this matter a certain lib- 



"MARY MONICA FRANCIS" 199 

erty must be accorded to individual inclination; the 
Church does not put her children into uniform; but 
I would earnestly recommend the following consid- 
erations to all who have passed '' beyond the Road 
to Rome " and stand safely within the Fold. First, 
always follow the Mass carefully with the Missal. 
The Mass is the center of the Christian life and no 
paraphrase can surpass its sublime teaching, no 
other prayers so fully express the needs of the crea- 
ture or so invincibly appeal to the love of the Cre- 
ator. We ought all to know the Mass by heart, and 
look up its variable portions day by day, for these 
supply Bible reading in themselves and lead to more 
— the attraction is toO' overwhelming to permit of 
one's stopping at the set Epistles and Gospels. 

The '' Imitation of Christ " we should all have in 
pocket form. At every turn or perplexity on the 
path of life that miraculous little book, opened at 
random, will answer the necessity. And for the 
quarter of an hour that very few need deny them- 
selves, the " Liturgical Year " of Dom Gueranger 
is the book that converts should sacrifice much to 
possess. That saintly monk devoted forty years of 
his life to compiling it, and twenty more had to pass 
before his successors completed it from his notes, 
supplemented by their own exalted piety and learn- 
ing. Let no one be frightened because there are 
fifteen volumes of it! A little at a time, just what 
is needed to bring one's train of thought into knowl- 



200 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

edge of, and harmony with, the mind of the Church 
at each Liturgical season — then the page is turned, 
but one comes back to it year by year as the season 
recurs, and before one is aware of it one has 
become thoroughly instructed, not only in dogma 
and practice, but in every point of history that 
touches religion, and in the divinely attractive stories 
of all the great Saints. Nothing that is not true 
and beautiful can come from that Benedictine fount 
which has kept real learning alive for over fourteen 
hundred years! 

Alban Butler's ^^ Lives of the Saints " should be 
in the Catholic's library; Monsignor Gaume's 
" Catechism of Perseverance," which is not what is 
generally understood by a Catechism at all, but a 
complete and lucid explanation of dogmatic truth 
and Bible history, enlivened by a wealth of apposite 
anecdotes and modern instances, is a most valuable 
and delightful work, intended expressly for those 
who have already passed through the preparatory 
stages of their religious education. And, talking 
of Catechisms, let me mention the ^^ Catechism in 
Examples," a one-volume book crammed from cover 
to cover with the most interesting true stories I ever 
read. 

I think I have answered the questions addressed 
to me by the Editor of " Beyond the Road to 
Rome " — '' Are you perfectly satisfied with the 
Church?" ''Have you ever had cause to regret 
your conversion?" But since a direct question re- 



"MARY MONICA FRANCIS" 20I 

quires a direct answer, I will say, once for all, that 
the Catholic Church has satisfied every need of my 
heart and mind for half a life time, and that I pray 
God in His great mercy to let me die in the Faith. 



THE REV. PAUL JAMES FRANCIS, S.A./ 

GRAYMOOR, GARRISON, N. Y. 

Father Superior, Society of The Atonement. 

]\Iy thesis is this: The so-called Oxford ]Move- 
ment in the Anglican Church is a Romeward ]\Iove- 
ment and its teiininiis ad quern, a return of the 
Catholic remnant in the Anglican Body to com- 
munion with the Apostolic See. So far as this has 
been, now is, and shall hereafter prove to be the 
outcome of the Oxford ]\Iovement, it is inspired and 
directed by God and is the work of the Holy Ghost. 
To this ^Movement I owe my own conversion to 
Catholicism, and being correspondingly grateful, I 
wish to win for it among my fellow Catholics as 
much sympathy as possible ; and it is to this end — 
and not for self-laudation — I contribute this story. 

I have sometimes said that it took Divine Provi- 
dence seventy-five years to make me a Catholic. Xot 
that I wish to add twenty-five years to my actual 
age, but in reality my conversion began with my 
father ; yet in his case it never got beyond the High 
Church Anglican stage. To tell my story, there- 
fore, I must start with my father. He belonged to 

1 This article was given to the Editor by Father Paul before 
the publication in The Lamp (November and December 1913) 
of the History of the Society of the Atonement, wherein the 
narrative is very similar to this. 

202 



II 



REV. PAUL JAMES FRANCIS, S.A. 203 

an honorable Welsh family, proud of their sterling 
integrity, who migrated from the Old Country to 
Philadelphia in the early part of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. I often have heard my father tell of his uncle, 
Tom Wattson, a wholesale baker of the Quaker 
City who contracted with the United States Gov- 
ernment to supply breadstuffs to the army during 
the war with Mexico, but owing to the uncalculated 
rise in the price of flour, he was ruined financially. 
He might have compromised with his creditors at 
twenty-five cents on the dollar ; but he was too hon- 
est for that, and before he died he discharged every 
obligation he had contracted, dollar for dollar. 

Joseph Newton Wattson, for that was my father's 
name, was bo-rn in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, and 
as a young man began his professional career as a 
law practitioner. His elder brother, Lewis T. Watt- 
son, after whom I was named, became a wealthy 
iron manufacturer whose mills were located in Lew- 
istown and he became president also of the Hunt- 
ington and Broad Top Railroad, one of the earliest 
and still existing railroads of Pennsylvania. The 
family was Calvinistic and its members were ad- 
herents of the Presbyterian Church, in which my 
father was strictly reared. 

He had not long been practicing law when he 
providentially became interested in a controversy 
which occurred at the time between Dr. Potter, the 
Anglican Bishop of Pennsylvania, and a prominent 
Presbyterian Doctor of Divinity. My father's 



204 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

legally trained mind soon convinced him that Bishop 
Potter had the better of the argument and, being 
an extremely conscientious man, he was true to his 
convictions and not only submitted to the Apostolic- 
ity which the Episcopal Church claimed, but more 
than that, he actually abandoned the practice of the 
law and entered the General Theological Seminary, 
Chelsea Square, Xew York City, to become a clergy- 
man of the Episcopal Church. 

This was in the early forties and shortly after the 
submission of John Henr}^ Xewman to the jurisdic- 
tion of the Apostolic See. The ritualistic, or 
'' Puseyite '' movement, as it was then commonly 
called (for Dr. Pusey succeeded Cardinal Xe\niian 
as its moving spirit) had taken root in America and 
the General Theological Seminary had become a 
'' storm center " of agitation between the ritualistic 
and the evangelical parties. 'My father entered the 
controversy with the enthusiasm of a young convert 
and became a pronounced '^ Puseyite." So many 
of the young men of the seminary followed New- 
man's example and entered the Catholic Church — 
notably Wadhams, afterwards first Bishop of Og- 
densburgh, IMonsignor Preston, Rector of St. Ann's, 
Xew York, Father ^^^alworth, one of the first asso- 
ciates of Father Hecker in founding the Paulist 
Congregation, and ]Mc]\Iasters, the founder and edi- 
tor of the Freeman s Journal, — that the suspicion 
took fast hold of the minds of the dean and faculty 
of the seminary, that certain '* Jesuits in disguise " 



REV. PAUL JAMES FRANCIS, S.A. 205 

had entered the institution and were responsible for 
these transmigrations. My father and a young man 
named Donnelly, who formerly had been a Congre- 
gationalist, became the scapegoats of this false sus- 
picion and actually were expelled from the institu- 
tion as the ringleaders of this imaginary '' band of 
Jesuits." 

It seemed an irony of Providence that, about 
forty years later, the son of Joseph Newton Wattson 
studied for Anglican Orders in the same General 
Seminary and my father was at the time a trustee 
of the institution,_yet the son was much further 
advanced in ritualism and Catholic practice, than 
his father had been in his day as a student. 

Another striking coincidence was the following: 
When my father's dismissal from the seminary took 
place he went to Wilmington, Delaware, to call upon 
Dr. Lee, his bishop, who was an Evangelical of the 
Evangelicals; and the counsel he received was, 
" Young man, go to Rome, that's where you be- 
long." It was not, however, given to my father to 
see his duty with the bishop's eyes, and finally he 
was adopted and ordained to the Anglican ministry 
by Bishop Whittingham of Baltimore. Yet such 
was the cloud of suspicion that still hung round 
him by reason of his expulsion from the New York 
seminary, that the best his bishop could do for him 
was to assign him a country cure of souls on what 
is known as the " Eastern Shore " of Maryland. 

Once he was called by the vestry of St. Luke's 



2o6 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

Church, Bahimore, to be their rector; but a church 
bookseller of the Monumental City quickly secured 
a recall, by informing the vestry that this '' Eastern 
Shore " clergyman was a '' Jesuit Emissary." 
And thus it came to pass that my father, notwith- 
standing mental abilities of a high order and an at- 
tractive personality, spent thirty years of his minis- 
try in two obscure country parishes, the victim of a 
Popish bogey, pure and unadulterated. 

It was in 1885 that I was graduated from the Gen- 
eral Theological Seminary and returned to the east- 
ern shore of Maryland to be ordained a deacon. 
My Diocesan, Bishop Henry C. Lay, was at the time 
too ill to officiate and he called upon his venerable 
brother, the aged Bishop Lee of Delaware, to act in 
his place. And so it came to pass that my father pre- 
sented his son for ordination to the Bishop who, 
forty years before, had turned him from the door 
as a Roman suspect. When we sat at dinner that 
day, after the ordination was over, it was noticed 
that tears of emotion were in the eyes of Bishop 
Lee. 

My vocation to the ministry must have been in- 
fused at the same time with the grace of Holy Bap- 
tism, for it was recognized by my parents and others, 
while I was still an infant, and it was in my mind 
when I first began tot think. As far as vocation to 
the Religions Life is concerned, I am sure that it 
first came to me at the age of about ten years, when 
my father was recounting to me the story of his ex- 



REV. PAUL JAMES FRANCIS, S.A. 207 

pulsion from the seminary and incidentally men- 
tioned the Paulist Fathers. It was summer time. 
We sat together in the rectory hallway and I remem- 
ber distinctly how an interior voice — inaudible yet 
quite clear — said : " That is what you will do some 
day, found a Preaching Order like the Paulists." 

Through all the vicissitudes and changes of my 
subsequent career as a college student, a seminarian 
and an Episcopal clergyman, I never lost the remem- 
brance of that voice. I had been Rector of St. 
John's Church, Kingston, for some eight years, 
when, at the age of thirty, it seemed to me that the 
time had arrived for my resignation from parochial 
work and I contemplated retiring to the Mission 
Church of the Holy Cross which I had been instru- 
mental in establishing, two years previously, as a 
chapel-of-ease to St. John's, there to begin the for- 
mation of the Society. But what to call it per- 
plexed me more than anything else. I felt the at- 
traction to the Cross and Passion of our Divine Re- 
deemer; but every name I could think of in that 
connection already had been appropriated by some 
religious community, either in the Catholic or the 
Episcopal Church. 

It was at this time that St. Francis of Assisi be- 
gan to exercise a dominating influence over my life 
and, having read how he had based the Rule of the 
Friars Minor upon three Scripture texts which he 
had obtained by having a priest open before him the 
missal three times in the name of the Holy Trinity, 



2o8 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

I was strongly moved to seek of God in the same 
way the name of the new Institute. 

Accordingly, after early celebration of the Holy 
Communion on the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, 
July 9th, 1893, I knelt before the altar in St. John's 
Church and, having invoked the Holy Trinity, 
opened the volume of the Scriptures three times and 
thereby obtained — not the name alone, but, like 
St. Francis, the three texts which till this day re- 
main the Foundation oif the Constitution of the 
Society of the Atonement. Going from the church 
to the rectory, I first wrote down the name. Society 
of The Atonement^ at the top of a sheet O'f note- 
paper and underneath were carefully recorded the 
three texts, of which the central one contained the 
name : " We joy in God through our Lord Jesus 
Christ by Whom we have now received the Atone- 
ment." Romans v: 11. (King James Version.) 

Und'oubtedly I would have carried out my inten- 
tion of resigning St. John's and retiring to the Mis- 
sion Church of the Holy Cross had I not been in- 
terrupted then and there by the same interior voice 
that twenty years before had given me the first in- 
timation of religious vocation. This time the '' still, 
small voice " said : ^' You will have to wait seven 
years for this to be realized." I was distinctly dis- 
appointed ; nevertheless in obedience I laid the paper 
aside as if nothing had happened and went quietly 
on with my work as a pastor of souls. 

Two years later I went West and assumed the 



REV. PAUL JAMES FRANCIS, S.A. 209 

headship of the Associate Mission of Omaha — ex- 
changing a salary of $100.00 for one of $15.00 a 
month, — because I hoped that there I would be able 
to convert an association of unmarried clergy into 
the Religious Congregation of the Society of The 
Atonement. The term of pledged service in the As- 
sociate Mission was three years, subject to renewal 
at the will of each member. My companions were 
zealous, godly men whose theology and ritual prac- 
tice were modeled after the Roman pattern. To 
illustrate their self-denial and serious piety, it will 
suffice to say that for a considerable time we ob- 
served a Retreat of one day in every month, when 
no one ate or drank anything until six o'clock in the 
evening. We had four mission congregations in 
Omaha and as many more in outlying towns. So 
successful was the work that in one year the clergy 
of the Associate Mission presented twenty-five per 
cent, of all the candidates confirmed by Bishop 
Worthington in his entire diocese. Yet the Asso- 
ciate Mission was not destined, to eventuate in the 
Society of The Atonement; and now it lies buried 
in the same grave with so many like ventures in the 
Episcopal Church. 

It was on the Feast of the Dedication of All 
Franciscan Churches, July 4, 1898, that for the first 
time in my life I truthfully could say: ^' I believe 
in the universal jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff 
as the Successor of St. Peter and the Vicar of Jesus 
Christ.'' From my youth I had studied the question 



2IO BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

of Papal Supremacy far more than any other sin- 
gle historical and theological proposition connected 
with Christianity. Moreover, I had prayed con- 
stantly for supernatural light; but until that day I 
had still remained in the dark, and quite at sea as to 
the truth or falsity of the Petrine Claims. Truly, 
Faith is a supernatural gift of God and the study 
of books, without Divine illumination, is not suffi- 
cient to convince those born outside her pale of the 
Truths of the Catholic Religion, even though to 
those who enjoy that supernatural gift it all seems 
as clear as the sunlight. 

I immediately wrote to Bishop Worthington, 
told him what had happened, and tendered my res- 
ignation to take effect on the feast of St. Michael 
and All Angels, when my term of pledged service 
in the Associate Mission expired. After that I 
would go into retirement until I was quite sure 
whether it was the Will of God for me to enter the 
Catholic Church. 

It would make this story far too long were I to 
recount in detail the succession of Providential 
links which drew together at Graymoor not only 
the Friars but also the Sisters of The Atonement. 
Suffice it to say tha.t exactly seven years after re- 
ceiving the Name and Texts of the Society in St. 
John's Church, Kingston, I found myself wearing 
the habit of St. Francis and making my vows on 
the Mount of The Atonement, in the presence of 
Dr. Leighton Coleman, Anglican Bishop of Dela- 



REV. PAUL JAMES FRANCIS, S.A. 211 

ware and successor to Bishop Lee. The first serv- 
ice was held in a tent pitched upon the mountain's 
summit, on the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, 
July 22, 1900, and my Profession under the Fran- 
ciscan Rule was made in the same tent on the fol- 
lowing Friday. There were present thirteen mem- 
bers of the Society representing its three congrega- 
tions, viz., the FriarS', the Sisters and the Tertiaries. 
Thus was literally fulfilled the words I had heard 
in Kingston in 1893 : '' You will have toi wait seven 
years for this to be realized.'' 

The convent of the Sisters of The Ato-nement was 
erected alongside the Mission Church of St. John 
Baptist, Graymoor, in the summer of 1899; and 
St. Paul's Friary, on the Mount of The Ato-nement, 
was dedicated by Bishop Coleman, December 8, 
1900, in honor of the Immaculate Conception of the 
Blessed Virgin Mary. 

Then there followed the years of waiting for that 
glad day when the Doors of Peter's Sheepfold were 
opened and; the Society was admitted into com- 
munion with the Vicar of Christ. Those nine years 
were not idle years ; far from it. We of the Society 
of The Atonement very keenly realized that we had 
a message to deliver to our fellow Anglicans and 
in many ways we suffered in delivering it. Its an- 
nouncement meant isolation, contempt and to some 
extent ostracism more than actual persecution. 

When we first began to lay the foundation of our 
Institute at Graymoor, we met with considerable 



212 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

success from a popular viewpoint. Franciscanism 
(apart from the Papacy) has enthusiastic admirers 
not a few in the Anglican Church; and these 
were naturally pleased at the prospect of two Con- 
gregations of Franciscans, the Friars of The Atone- 
ment and the Sisters of The Atonement, taking 
their rise at Graymoor. But in 1901 we began 
openly proclaiming our faith in the jurisdiction of 
the Apostolic See and that we believed all that Rome 
believed. We did not hesitate to say to our Angli- 
can hearers that Henry VIII and Elizabeth were 
entirel}^ wrong in having repudiated the Papacy 
and in separating England from the Holy See. 
Furthermore : That the sole salvation for Angli- 
canism was wholesale repentance, retraction of er- 
ror, and corporate submission to the Successor of 
St. Peter. 

Never shall I forget my experience one evening 
at an archdeaconry meeting on Long Island when, 
in the presence of a large body of clergy and a con- 
gregation that filled the church, I enunciated the 
foregoing truth. In the middle of the semion the 
archdeacon ascended the steps of the altar and 
shouted in stentorian tones, '^ Let your light so 
shine before men that they may see your good 
works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.'^ 
This was not intended as an exhortation to the 
preacher to go onward bearing his witness; but in 
the Episcopal Church it is the offertory sentence, 
usually pronounced as the signal for the collection 



REV. PAUL JAMES FRANCIS, S.A. 213 

to be taken up. The preacher, of course, took the 
hint, and sat down. 

But, in a way the archdeacon never intended, I 
took his advice and continued to '' let my light 
shine '' by publishing The Lamp, which proved in 
the event a much more effective method of illu- 
minating the minds of Anglican readers on the 
burning question of Papal jurisdiction than if I had 
preached on the subject to hundreds of congrega- 
tions in every part of the country. There was no 
portion of the Anglican Communion, whether in 
Europe, America, Africa or Asia, where the rays 
of The Lamp did not penetrate, or where its Gospel 
of Papal Submission did not find a hearing. The 
message of The Lamp continues to this day bearing 
fruit in the Anglican vineyard. Not only through 
its influence have many Anglicans, both clerical and 
lay, found their way into Peter's Fold, but it has 
contributed its share to the formation of a new 
pa»rty in the Anglican body, that of the advocates 
of corporate submission to the Apostolic See, which 
in the popular parlance is called the Pro-Roman 
Party. 

After the preaching experience recorded above, 
invitations to- fill Anglican pulpits rarely came my 
way and I became to some extent a street preacher 
in consequence. One summer, by permission of the 
President of Manhattan Borough, I preached once 
a week on the steps of the City Hall in New York; 
at another time, on a street corner in Newburgh. 



214 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

As the Society of The Atonement persisted in 
propagating its Church Unity principles, efforts 
were made to silence us altogether; and Bishop 
Coleman, under pressure from certain of our an- 
tagonists, actually took the preliminary steps to- 
wards my deposition from the Episcopal ministry; 
but as I showed a disposition to fight the matter to 
a finish by demanding an ecclesiastical trial, the 
threatened deposition was allowed to fall into '' in- 
nocuous desuetude," and ended in the good Bishop 
letting us severely alone until his death, which oc- 
curred in December, 1907. 

The Rt. Rev. Frederick J. Kinsman, D.D., suc- 
ceeded him and at the hands of Bishop Kinsman I 
received the kindest and most considerate treatment. 
He invited me to Bishopstead, his residence in Wil- 
mington, and afforded me the opportunity of ex- 
plaining to him in full what I considered to be the 
providential mission of the Society of The Atone- 
ment; and at the same time, with the greatest free- 
dom and fullness, I explained to the bishop just 
what I and my associates in the Society of The 
Atonement believed. 

He informed me that he would take the whole 
subject under careful consideration and that, in 
about a month's time, he would write me his mature 
judgment. And once more, in connection with the 
Episcopal Diocese of Delaware, there occurred a 
singular coincidence : When his letter came it con- 
tained in substance — though more elaborately ex- 



REV. PAUL JAMES FRANCIS, S.A. 215 

pressed — the identical advice which Bishop Lee, 
sixty-five years before, had given to my father, 
namely: ''Make your submission to Rome; that 
is the only thing in consistency with your principles 
that is left open for you to do." Contrary, how- 
ever, to my father's action, I accepted the counsel 
of the bishop as a providential manifestation of the 
Will of God, and in August of that year, 1909, I 
went to Washington and called upon the Apostolic 
Delegate, then the Most Reverend Archbishop — 
now His Eminence — Cardinal Falconio'. 

Immediately upon my return to Graymoor I drew 
up a petition addressed to His Holiness Pope Pius 
X, professing our faith in the Holy Roman Church 
and all Her teachings, and asking the Holy Father 
to take our Institute under his protection and to 
preserve its name and identity. This petition was 
forwarded by the Apostolic Delegate to the Vati- 
can; and on October the seventh we received 
through His Excellency Monsignor Falconio the 
reply oif the Sovereign Pontiff graciously granting 
our petition. It was on Saturday, October 30th, 
that our corporate reception took place, His Emi- 
nence Cardinal Farley having deputed Monsignor 
Joseph H. Conroy, now Auxiliary Bishop of Og- 
densburgh, to reconcile us to the Holy See and re- 
ceive the Graymoor Community into the Catholic 
Church. 

At that time the Society consisted of about 
twenty-five members, — two friars of The Atone- 



2l6 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

ments, five Sisters and the rest Tertiaries, — all of 
whom with one or two exceptions among the Ter- 
tiaries, at that time or since, have entered the Fold 
of Peter. Had we persisted in remaining outside 
when once the door of entrance into the Fold had 
been providentially opened, I have not a doubt that 
the Society of The Atonement would sooner or later 
have become extinct; but now, under the blessing 
and fostering care of Christ's Vicar, it is pulsating 
with divine life and making most encouraging prog- 
ress. Already have we had the satisfaction of see- 
ing its example followed, in the submission of two 
religious communities much more numerous than 
our own, namely, that of the Benedictine Monks of 
Caldey Isle, off the coast of South Wales, and the 
Benedictine Nuns of St. Bride's Abbey, Milford 
Haven. Nor do w^e believe that this is the end of 
the list of corporate receptions from Anglicanism 
into the bosom of the Catholic Church. We be- 
lieve there has always been a Catholic-minded Rem- 
nant in the Church of England since the days of 
Elizabeth; and, in point of fact, nothing has been 
more remarkable in the religious phenomena of our 
time than the steady, persistent and advancing 
Catholicizing of the Anglican Body, since the Ox- 
ford *Movement, not in one part only but in every 
part of Great Britain and America. 

We do not expect a corporate submission of all 
Anglicans to the Apostolic See, in either this or any 
subsequent generation, but we do anticipate the 



REV. PAUL JAMES FRANCIS, S.A. 217 

Home-coming of the Catholic Remnant. How ex- 
tensive the numbers will prove to be God alone 
knows ! 

What has thus far been most unique and signifi- 
cant in the Society of The Atonement is that it had 
its origin outside the Fold of Peter and yet that 
from its beginning all its members have held the 
Catholic Faith and have breathed the spirit of loy- 
alty and devotion to the Apostolic See. It is but 
another illustration of the fundamental principles 
of redemption recorded by St. Paul in the Fifth 
Chapter of Romans: '* As by the disobedience of 
one man many were made sinners, so also by the 
obedience of one many shall be made just." (V. 
19.) By the disobedience of one man, Henry VHI, 
a whole nation and people became rebels to the Apos- 
tolic See. So also " By the obedience of one, many 
shall be made just," found its illustration in the 
submission of John Henry Newman, — to be fol- 
lowed in each successive generation by increasing 
numbers of Anglicans returning to the jurisdiction 
of Christ's Supreme Vicar; and in our isolation 
upon the Mount of The Atonement — when for so 
long a time there was only one cleric and one lay 
brother — it was borne in upon us as a covenant 
promise from God, that the Children of The Atone- 
ment, with whom are included all the Children of 
Reconciliation to the Apostolic See, will be increased 
and multiplied until they become " as the stars for 
multitude." 



2l8 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

When God sought to save a rebelHous race He 
gave His only-begotten Son not to thunder down 
from Mount Sinai the law of God and His Judg- 
ment upon the wicked, but " the Word was made 
flesh and dw^elt among us." Christ identified Him- 
self with the race He sought to redeem, and gloried 
in the title, '^ Son of Man." There was, however, 
this difference between Himself and them. They 
were the children of disobedience while He " came 
down from heaven not to do His own will but the 
will of Him that sent Him." (St. John 26:38.) 

Indeed it was by being obedient unto death, even 
the death of the Cross, that He made possible the 
reconciliation of sinners with God, or in other 
words, the At-one-ment between God and man. He 
said : '' Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground 
and die, it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth 
forth much fruit." By His own death he propa- 
gated among the disobedient the seed of the Atone- 
ment, that is, the Children of Obedience. And this 
seed will go on increasing and multiplying " Until 
the kingdom of this world is become the Kingdom 
of our Lord's and his Christ's, and he shall reign 
for ever and ever. Amen." (Apoc. 11:15.) 

This, I think, explains the providential meaning 
of the Society of The Atonement's Anglican origin, 
and although it has now happily emerged from An- 
glicanism, its message tO' Anglicans has not ceased 
to be, but aided by its witness and example, the seed 
of obedience to Papal Authority will go on being 



REV. PAUL JAMES FRANCIS, S.A. 2ig 

propagated in the Anglican Communion until the 
conversions and submissions hitherto experienced 
will be as nothing to those that shall hereafter be 
recorded. Hence we close our thesis where we be- 
gan it, namely, that the so-called Oxford Move- 
ment in the Anglican Church is a Rdmeward Move- 
ment and its '' terminus ad quern '' the return of the 
Catholic Remnant in the Anglican Body to com- 
munion with the Apostolic See; and this, I think, 
answers the question as to whether I am satisfied, 
beyond all shadow of doubt, that my share in that 
Movement was according to God's Will. 



FREDERICK WILLIAM GOODRICH. 

PORTLAND, OREGON. 

Organist; musical composer; descended collaterally from 
Thomas Goodrich, last Catholic Bishop of Ely and Lord 
High Chancellor of England. Organist 1884-1900 of sev- 
eral churches in London ; founded Anglican Society of St. 
Osmund; has contributed articles on music to English 
and American periodicals and papers. Sub-dean of the 
American Guild of Organists (Oregon branch). Now act- 
ing as Organist and Director of the Choir at St. Mary's 
Cathedral, Portland, Oregon. Editor of the Oregon 
Catholic Hymnal (1912). 

When I was about eight years of age, I became 
a chorister in the Church of All Saints', Notting 
Hill, London, at that time noted for its High Angli- 
can doctrine and dignified ceremonial. Daily choral 
services were the rule, and on Sundays a choral 
celebration of Holy Communion was a prominent 
feature. The church was a magnificent structure, 
with beautiful stained glass, frescoes and statuary. 
The old Gregorian tones were in daily use, the 
music was of a high order, and the ritual decidedly 
" Puseyite." The famous preachers and church 
leaders of the day were constant visitors during fes- 
tal seasons, and their '' Catholic " sermons made 
such doctrines as the Real Presence, the State of 

220 



FREDERICK WILLIAM GOODRICH 221 

the Faithful Departed, and the Communion of 
Saints very familiar to our ears. This kind of at- 
mosphere made us long for more, and whenever 
we could get free from our church duties, we would 
steal away and view with mingled envy and delight 
the stately processions, the gorgeous ceremonial 
and the beautiful appointments of such advanced 
churches as St. Alban's, Holborn; St. Mary Mag- 
dalene's, Paddington; St. Augustine's, Kilburn; 
and St. Matthias', Earl's Court. In these churches 
we heard sermons by men looked upon as leaders 
in what we were gradually coming to believe was 
the real Church of England, and now and again we 
read with dismay and some kind of indignation that 
many of our heroes had 'verted to what we in our 
youthful ignorance were pleased to call the " Ital- 
ian " Church of Rome. Years went on and I be- 
came assistant organist of All Saints' Church, and 
as the tone of the teaching became more advanced, 
I progressed with it, and the practices of the ex- 
treme school of English churchmanship became still 
more familiar. 

About this time our parish received a visit from 
Father Ignatius, '' the Monk of Llanthony," and 
it fell to my lot to play the organ at the first service 
conducted by this remarkable man after his long 
inhibition from preaching in the Anglican churches 
of London. His presence and teaching gave food 
for thought on another line. This increasing fa- 
miliarity with what was called Catholic doctrine 



222 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

and ceremonial made me look with tolerant eyes 
toward the Church of Rome, and when free from 
my duties at the organ I would attend Mass or Bene- 
diction at the beautiful church of St. Mary of the 
Angels, near by. This great church, built by the 
late Cardinal Manning, was served by the Oblates 
of St. Charles Borromeo, and the services were car- 
ried out with much dignity and beauty. Many vis- 
its were also made to the Church of St. Simon Stock 
in Kensington, served by the Carmelite Fathers, 
and the Church of St. Philip Neri at Brompton, the 
home of the Fathers of the Oratory. Serious 
doubts arose in my mind as to the position of the 
Church of England, and I was on the point of be- 
coming a convert, when I was appointed Organist 
of the Church of St. John the Baptist, Kensington. 
The minister in charge of this church was the Rev. 
Sidney F. Green, who had been a '^ prisoner for 
conscience's sake " in Lancaster jail for many 
months. His teaching and influence restored for 
awhile my waning belief in the Anglican Church, 
and led me to think that it was indeed a true 
" branch " of the Holy Catholic Church. I be- 
came an enthusiastic advocate of the insular posi- 
tion of the Church of England, and in '89 founded 
the Society of St. Osmund for the promotion and 
restoration of the old ceremonial of the Church of 
Sarum. While denying the authority of the Holy 
Father, the members of this Society were ultra- 
Roman in doctrine and practice. The society soon 



FREDERICK WILLIAM GOODRICH 223 

fell under the ban of the Anglican bishops, and was 
ultimately merged into the Alcuin Club for liturgical 
study. My connection with this society and through 
it with many of the prominent advanced churchmen 
of the day, again brought a long period of unrest 
from which I suffered with more or less intensity 
until my departure from England to Canada in 
1904. 

After leaving England where the Anglican 
Church has all the glamour of State establishment, 
where it has possession of the ancient Cathedrals, 
Abbey and Parish churches, where its ministers are 
privileged visitors in castle and hall, it was some- 
what of a new experience to enter a country where 
it was only one of many conflicting denominations, 
and where its adherents were in a decided minority. 
The Protestant side of the Church showed up very 
prominently in the middle West of Canada, and in 
the freer air of that more democratic country, its 
claims to Catholicity seemed to rest on very inse- 
cure foundations. After a short sojourn in Canada, 
we moved to the far West of the United States, 
and in the State of Oregon determined to make our 
home. The weakness and irresponsibility of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in that great State 
finally decided me that the church that Our Blessed 
Lord had founded was not represented by that body. 
At last came the definite call. The most Reverend 
Archbishop Christie offered me the post of Organ- 
ist and Choir Director in his Cathedral Church in 



224 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

the city of Portland, Oregon. It was still some 
few months before I took the final step, but in the 
Fall of 1907 came a severe nervous breakdown and 
eyesight trouble. During the period of enforced 
rest, the conviction of the truth of the claims of the 
Church came upon me with compelling force, and 
in the month of November of that same year, I was 
received into the Church in the private chapel of 
the Archbishop. On the Feast of the Immaculate 
Conception I made my first communion in the Ca- 
thedral, and then began a period of happiness in 
church life which has never left me. The more I 
know of the prelates, priests and religious of the 
Catholic Church, the more I am convinced of its 
wonderful unity of teaching and practice. 

Viewed from within the Catholic Church, the 
claim of the Church of England to be one with the 
church of pre-Reformation days seems but a vain 
fantasy and an idle dream, while the thought that 
any one of the modern denominational societies can 
be identical with the One Church built upon the 
Rock is too absurd to be retained for a moment. 
"' The Bible and the Bible only '' has a new meaning 
for Catholics, for in its sacred pages we get the 
certainty of the Divinity of Our Blessed Lord. In 
the inspired pages of the four Gospels there is a 
clear picture of the God-^Ian, Our Lord Jesus 
Christ. When once we realize in all its fullness this 
doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, the story of the 
foundation of the Catholic Church, and its wonder- 



FREDERICK WILLIAM GOODRICH 225 

ful life throughout the ages becomes very easy to 
understand. The authority of the Supreme Pon- 
tiff, the power of absolution, the presence of Our 
Lord in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar are all 
easy to accept and believe when we remember that 
He and His Father are One, that all power was 
given unto Him and this Divine Power He gave 
unto His Apostles, and they in turn to- others, and 
" thus the Holy Church is here although the Visible 
Presence of Her Lord is gone." 

If one thoroughly understands the claims of the 
Catholic Church and the foundations upon which 
they are built, there can be no doubt or unrest within 
Her Fold. This experience has been mine, and 
every day brings a clearer realization of the fact 
that outside the Church there is no safety, for if 
the gates of Hell have prevailed against Her in de- 
fiance of Christ's promise as Her enemies would 
have us believe, what certainty have we that any 
one of the self-appointed teachers without can be 
in any better position to lead our souls to God. 
Thank God the Holy Catholic Church is as of yore 
"the pillar and ground of the truth,'' and if we do 
our share in God's great work, we need have no 
fear for the future of our souls. 



HENRY C GRANGER, B.A., 

EVANSTON, ILL. 

Late rector of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church. 

After nearly seven years in the Catholic Church, 
or " Beyond the Road to Rome," what is the ver- 
dict? 

Ordinarily the person v^ho enters the Catholic 
Church from one of the Protestant denominations, 
especially if he has been a minister, is looked upon 
as having committed spiritual suicide ; is practically 
dead, as far as anything like true religious experi- 
ence is concerned ; he has " gone to Rome,'' and that 
is all there is to it. If he retains his former friends, 
there has come up between these and himself a bar- 
rier, — and with all charitableness, he, the convert, 
or the pervert, as he is sometimes styled, is looked 
at askance. One wonders, at times, why it should 
be so — and the answer is that it is owing in some 
cases to an obstinate prejudice: in others to an in- 
vincible ignorance; or that principle of indififerent- 
ism which characterizes the religious attitude of so 
many multitudes at the present day. People say: 
" One ReHgion is as good as another. What dif- 
ference does it make!" famihar expressions to us 
all. What then is there in the seven years that I 

226 



HENRY C. GRANGER, B.A. 227 

have spent " Beyond the Road to Rome " that justi- 
fied me in stepping aside from, and out of an active 
denominational ministry — Presbyterian and Epis- 
copal — of nearly thirty years? 

First — and it is the underlying basis of every- 
thing else — one comes to realize that the CathoHc 
Church is the church founded by Our Lord : that it 
was built to live: that its long and varied history 
proves it: and that unless the abiding presence and 
work of the Holy Spirit is to be discredited, Our 
Lord's Church must still exist on the face of the 
earth; and to all who submit to its authority must 
come certain very blessed and definite results. To 
me, some of these consequences are as follows: 
Accepting her authority, I gained intellectual peace 
and the disappearing of all doubts. With this p^ace 
of mind there followed room to grow along well- 
fixed and thoroughly established lines — reaching on 
ahead unto all eternity. There is much that is in- 
comprehensible, but this is not equivalent to that 
state of mind wherein one is forever questioning. 
As it was said of Our Lord, so must it be recog- 
nized and affirmed of the priests of His church — 
that they speak with authority, and with this divine 
authority comes peace of mind; surely a great, real, 
and intensely practical blessing not hitherto pos- 
sessed. 

And because of this loving surrender of heart and 
soul there follows such a love for, and devotion to, 
Jesus Christ as one outside the Catholic Church can- 



228 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

not for one moment realize. Everything centers in 
Him and His Real Presence on the Altar. This is 
the drawing power of His church to-day. The 
Saints have their places and their proper devotions ; 
the various Sacraments are channels of Grace; the 
Word is preached ; the spiritual helps are multitudi- 
nous; but always Our Lord is the center and sub- 
stance of it all. This is the heart of the system if 
you wall ; this is what binds together this marvellous 
and world- w4de organization, — and in a way, and 
with a force, and a beauty, and a strength, that ex- 
ist in no other religious body or society. Instead 
of there being so much of the Human in the Cath- 
olic Church — and less of the Divine — say in the 
public ministrations of the church, than in other 
religious bodies, the reverse is the truth. It is Christ 
on the Altar, Christ ministering in the person of the 
Priest, Christ verily taken and eaten in the Com- 
munion of His Body and Blood, that seals His 
Church as divine. To have come to a realization 
of such facts in the realm of the spiritual is worth 
infinitely more than the cost. 

The only other result that can be mentioned is 
the oft-times fleeting but nevertheless real glimpse of 
the world-wide activity and power of the Catholic 
Church in the affairs of men that can only be gained 
from the inside. It comes over one at times that 
this is not the Church of England or Scotland or 
the United States alone, but it is the Church of the 
entire earth, irrespective of nationality, and through 



HENRY C. GRANGER, B.A. 229 

this we come to have a better understanding of hef 
comprehensiveness in its true sense. Such a breadth 
and depth of view makes us wonder at her richness, 
her strength, her beauty and universal adaptabiHty. 
To the natural man, such results appear of little or 
small value. To the man who recognizes the ex- 
istence of his spiritual nature, and its demands, the 
Catholic Church alone has it in its power to meet 
and satisfy what his soul requires. She gives us a 
final authority in matters of religion; intellectual 
peace of mind; the Real Presence of Jesus Christ on 
the Altar, with all that It implies ; and such a width 
of view as is in harmony with Our Lord's last com- 
mand : " Go ye into all the World, and preach the 
Gospel to every creature." 

Therefore it is the Catholic Church that is the 
Living, Active, Beneficent Church of the Incarnate 
Lord in the richest sense of these words — and only 
those who look at Her from within can appreciate 
these truths. With the Blessed Virgin we who are 
within the Fold exclaim: '' My Soul doth magnify 
the Lord!" 



THE REV. TOHX ^lARKS WHITE HAXDLY, 

WIXCHESTER, TEXXESSEE. 
Priest of the Congregation of St. Paul the Apostle. 

'My motive for becoming a Catholic was the de- 
sire for self-sacrifice, for discipline and for service. 

The longing to make a sacrifice of one's self is, 
I believe, not uncommon. ]^Iany children find in 
the fierce demands on their strength and skill made 
by childhood games, the zest of self-sacrifice, rather 
than of conquest. Surely, the best of romantic 
love is the longing for self-iinmolation. Deep 
down in our nature we have this impulse to get away 
from self, whose dominion is so malign, and to find 
a purer, freer air for the soul to breathe, in a life 
of sacrifice. As I approached maturity, the sense of 
this need grew upon me. I think the greatest suf- 
fering I ever had in my life belongs to those years 
of young manhood, when my whole being was cry- 
ing out for an opportunity to serve, and I did not 
see anywhere on earth a demand for me, or for my 
service. I am sure this was the predominating 
attraction of the Catholic Church for me. Little 
as I knew of it, the impression that it gave me an 
opportunity to lose myself in a thoroughly dis- 
ciplined and world-wide army of self-sacrifice, \vas 

^30 



REV. JOHN MARKS WHITE HANDLY 23 1 

the one compelling charm which compensated me 
for all of the apparent losses that conversion threat- 
ened. 

I am happy now to bear witness, after eighteen 
years of life in the Catholic Church, that this hope 
was not in the least disappointed. 

Surely, it is not necessary to prove that being a 
Catholic means self-immolation. This is true for 
every Catholic. The measure of a man's partici- 
pation in the life of the Catholic Church is the de- 
gree of his self-sacrifice. We lay down self in the 
Confessional. We forget self in Holy Communion. 
The very breath of our prayers is the substitution 
of the Sacred Heart for our hearts of stone. 

For me, immolation has taken the shape of giv- 
ing Missions, and I am immensely consoled to mark 
how the succeeding years of a missionary career 
make an ever greater demand upon all my resources. 
Year by year I find the claims of human souls have 
a stronger empire over me. Sacrifices which in 
earlier years seemed to be prodigies of heroic vir- 
tue have become commonplaces of the day's work. 
Of course I am not claiming heroic virtue. I am 
merely recalling the exaggerated ideas of the Mis- 
sionary's task, which frightened me in the beginning, 
and now no longer seem to be hardships at all. 
Mission giving is a slow and sure burning up of all 
a man's faculties on the Altar of the Gospel, and I 
cannot conceive of any career in all the wide world 
which could have brought me an equal happiness. 



232 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

I was made for it. Therefore I gladly bear wit- 
ness that in the Catholic Church I have found ful- 
fillment of the strongest and most elementary desire 
of youth. 

Talking to some politicians and newspaper men 
in the lobby of the Texas legislature a few weeks 
ago, I gave my reason for joining the Catholic 
Church. " I saw I could not keep straight without 
the strong hand of discipline over me/' I said. " I 
turned away from all miy antecedents, everything 
I loved on earth, and threw myself into the arms of 
the Catholic Church simply because I believed she 
would give me the discipline I needed. I was afraid 
of myself! " 

This caused a general laugh. One grizzled cor- 
respondent replied, '' That is the most original rea- 
son for joining the Roman Catholic Church I ever 
heard!" 

Nevertheless, this was actually one of my strong- 
est reasons for seeking to become a Catholic; and 
in this desire, also, I have not been disappointed. 
Of course, in my novitiate, on which I entered im- 
mediately after baptism, I had five years of the 
strictest possible discipline; and this must not be 
forgotten in the estimate of the character of Cath- 
olic discipline which I am now about to give. But 
I have been more and more astonished as the years 
go by to feel the yielding and mother-love quality 
of the Church's discipline. It seems that there is 
no limit of waywardness which can outstrip her en- 



REV. JOHN MARKS WHITE HANDLY 233 

folding arms of love. It is this constant pressure 
of affection and tenderness and hope, no matter how 
often the child has fallen, which impresses m.e as 
the strongest and strangest quality of the discipline 
which attracted me to her in my ignorance and need. 
Everywhere I see this same trait manifested: in 
the dealings of the priest with the penitent, and of 
the superior with his religious subjects; and of the 
Bishop with his priests. It is an amazing quality 
of yielding, which, nevertheless, never gives up its 
own ideals, and by the pressure of its very gentle- 
ness finally brings the prodigal back to the straight 
and narrow path. 

As a man advances in age there is certainly a ten- 
dency towards a greater love for discipline. I have 
seen it in myself and others. As experience of the 
Church's discipline increases, so does a sense of its 
benignity and justice increase, until at last the joy 
of being a servant in the Father's house outweighs 
all the world's allurements. 

The Southern boy is nourished on the ideals of 
chivalry. It was not strange that in my days of 
transition, when the thought of conversion was 
growing ever stronger, that the Catholic Church 
presented herself to me as a forlorn lady, appealing 
for knightly service. Such a poor, tattered, winsome 
queen! I asked myself tremblingly, could I find 
a nobler object of my devotion? one whose guerdon 
was half so honorable? one whose need was half 
so great? Along the same line of thought, I 



234 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

dreamed one night, vividly, of a great army made 
up of rank on rank, erect and passive before the 
enemy. Beyond were black war clouds, shot with 
flame, and these clouds, I knew, shrouded the hosts 
of darkness. I saw in my dream men constantly 
falling from the ranks of the army, and I saw out of 
the dim twilight around them new forms taking at 
once the place of those who had fallen. In my 
dream I had an intense longing to be one of those 
volunteers. I wanted to step into the next vacant 
place. Now, the Catholic Church most abundantly 
satisfied this longing. If I suffered at one time 
from a sense of not being needed, surely I have 
never had that feeling since I became a Catholic! 
Always there has been more work to do than time 
in which to finish it. Often I have rounded out a 
day's ardent toil by hours of sleeplessness, planning 
ways and means of accomplishing other tasks which 
w^ere crying out to be done. This sense of being in 
the fray, of being busy, of having great enterprises 
awaiting one's hand, of being able to contribute to 
enormous w^orks in which hundreds of millions of 
people are concerned, and knowing that the work 
is bound to succeed, because it is God's work and 
cannot fail — this is glorious! This is the true joy 
of living. I do not know anything in human life 
to compare with it. 

During my first year as a priest in New York 
City, I was overwhelmed by the work of a great 
parish, thousands of confessions, thousands of com- 



REV. JOHN MARKS WHITE HANDLY 235 

munions, innumerable sick calls, constant demand 
for instructions and sermons. I came near wearing 
myself out and breaking down completely. Then 
I, the youngest of the community, was sent to Ten- 
nessee to lay the foundation of a Paulist house in 
the midst of a great non-Catholic territory. It was 
my own old home. My school-mates and neigh- 
bors, when they heard the Catholics were coming, 
seriously debated whether they would greet us with 
violence, tar and feather us and drive us away. 
After I had immersed myself in the temporal cares 
of the new foundation and yet found time to give a 
Mission to non-Catholics, my venerable Superior 
General said to me, '' I have wondered at your cour- 
age." But really I never thought of courage. 
There was so much to be done that I often went 
without food and sleep in the sheer fascination of 
the task. 

It seems to me now a rash thing for my superiors 
to have put one so young in charge of such work. 
Later I was sent to the Pacific Coast and spent five 
years on missions there. I have always been thank- 
ful for these beautiful experiences. One summer, I 
gave seven missions in Alaska. Mr. William Dean 
Howells tells of his disposition to buy a house and 
go to housekeeping in every town he visits. This 
trait is strong in me. I loved the Alaska missions 
and longed to remain there to do some part of the 
heroic work of the Jesuit Fathers, who are laying 
the foundations of Catholic life in our greatest ter- 



236 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

ritory. I spent one year getting the Chicago house 
founded and another year in Tennessee, during 
which time I preached from two to four times 
daily for ten weeks in the Chapel Car, face to face 
with the most pathetic needs of " the man in Mace- 
donia." Every nook and cranny of the United 
States cries out for the Catholic Church. 

I worked for two years with our dearly beloved 
and sadly lamented Father Doyle in the Apostolic 
Mission House at Washington, absorbed in the 
needs of the nation-wide Apostolate, and longing to 
see the plans of the Mission House brought nearer 
to practical realization. 

I could not be for two years on the campus of 
the Catholic University without being wrapped up 
in the noble dreams of Monsignor Shahan, and 
moved with most fervent love for his great charac- 
ter. I believe he is one of God's most precious 
gifts to the Catholic Church in America. His life 
of complete immolation, body, mind and soul, to 
the interests of the Catholic University will be 
crowned with results which will enrich our Church 
and people for generations to come. I was espe- 
cially interested in the magnificent possibilities for 
the University promised by the Sisters' College. 
This will enlist all the Sisters of America in sup- 
port of the University and place an ardent advocate 
of University training in every school room through- 
out our Catholic system of education. The power 
of the Sisters thus combined will be irresistible. 



REV. JOHN MARKS WHITE HANDLY 237 

By their help the CathoHc University of America 
will grow to rival the University of Paris in the 
thirteenth century. I was glad to have a hand in 
launching the first Summer School for Sisters. 

Then I was sent to Austin, Texas, to become en- 
gaged in the educational problem from the opposite 
extreme. There we have a very poorly equipped 
and insecure foundation, which we hope one day to 
build into an institution so strong that it will safe- 
guard every Catholic student attending the State 
University and send them all away at the end of 
the four years impregnable in their faith. This 
will be a reversal of the present conditions, for the 
State University and kindred institutions have been 
terribly fatal to the faith of Catholic students. 
More than that, we hope to see the Catholic lecture 
course at these institutions becoming a great mis- 
sionary influence, destroying the prejudices of the 
past and hastening the day when the State will ap- 
preciate the Church as her best citizen. In order 
to accomplish this we must build a dormitory for the 
women students, and a club house for the men 
which will offset the enticements of the Y. M. C. A. 
and kindred anti-Catholic influences. They are 
lavishly equipped for winning students. And we 
are so poor! 

In my efforts to make this work known, I have 
resumed the writing of fiction, which, in early youth, 
I hoped to make my career. I have published two 
rather lengthy serial stories and now have a third 



238 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

in process. As a young man, when I was trying 
to write for the sake of writing, I found it insuf- 
ferably difficult, because the mere motive of perfec- 
tion in form paralyzed me. Now, that I have a 
message, and care more for the message than the 
manner, it seems that I could easily put in all my 
time writing if my opportunities for other service 
were destroyed. 

This is only a sketch, telling how the Catholic 
Church opens up opportunities of service to her chil- 
dren. Of course, what I have found possible has 
presented itself in other shapes to better men than 
I. I am merely registering my testimony that I 
have found w^ork enough to do and great joy in 
the doing of it. 

My three desires have thus been fulfilled. But I 
have much more to tell of unexpected blessings. 
For example, outside the Catholic Church I had not 
dreamed of the peace certainty in religion brings, 
and therefore I did not know how to wish for it. 
This is to me now an unspeakable comfort. The 
knowledge that Jesus is really present in the Holy 
Eucharist, was another surprise awaiting me after 
I crossed the threshold. Of course, this alone is 
ineffably more than every other reason for being a 
Catholic. I passionately love our Holy Father Pius 
X, and I feel that his zeal for daily communions 
was kindled in me even before he became our Holy 
Father. I have, of late, made all my missions 
Eucharistic Missions and insist on the daily com- 



REV. JOHN MARKS WHITE HANDLY 239 

munion of those who are making the mission. 
The results are nothing short of miraculous. Every 
mission leaves me more and more astonished at the 
gracious manifestations of the power of Jesus in 
the Blessed Sacrament, a power of which faith, of 
course, told me before I entered the Church, but a 
power whose exercise I now behold with my own 
eyes, and feel in my own person. 

There is one more, a secondary reason, for being 
a Catholic, which I must not fail to mention with 
gratitude. That is the enjoyment of pure democ- 
racy, which I believe the Catholic Church alone can 
give. I am a snob by nature and a snob by educa- 
tion, but the Catholic Church has made me a brother 
to every man on earth. All sense of class dissen- 
sion and race distinction has vanished. I love the 
sinner and the saint, the Catholic and the non-Cath- 
olic, the yellow man and the black man and the 
white. I am interested in everything and every- 
body. I sympathize with all and I want to help in 
every good work. And I know this enlargement of 
my heart is solely due to my participation in the 
Catholicity of the Catholic Church. 



THE REV. EDWARD F. HAWKS, 
ST. Edward's church, • 

PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
Formerly instructor at Xashotah House, Wisconsin. 

The increasing flow of earnest converts into the 
Catholic Church is one of the effects of the theologi- 
cal development caused by the Oxford movement. 
High Churchmen, embarrassed by so many defec- 
tions from their ranks, and failing to see that they 
are inevitable, have adopted an attitude of hostility 
towards Rome which is inconsistent with their re- 
ligious sympathies. They feel that they must ac- 
count for these conversions. It is most common 
for them to allege that they are caused by discour- 
agement on the one hand at the dominant Prot- 
estantism in their own church, and to temporar\^ il- 
lusionm.ent on the other hand, due to the majestic 
claims of the Roman Catholic Church. They are 
ready, then, to believe that the convert is soon dis- 
appointed with his new surroundings and yearns to 
retrace his steps to the " Church of his baptism." 
They are able to quote a few instances of dissatis- 
fied persons who took offense at some real or im- 
aginary' ill-treatment, and they are ready to forget 

^40 



REV. EDWARD F. HAWKS 24 1 

the great army of converts of reliable judgment 
who have found peace and happiness in the Catholic 
Church. 

Well do I remember the announcement made in 
All Saints' Church, Clifton, that Father Maturin 
would not preach the Lenten sermons because he 
had seceded to Rome. It was then that I experi- 
enced my first real doubt about the Church of Eng- 
land — a doubt that returned year after year as 
others dropped out of the Anglican ranks, and none 
came from Rome to take their places. To me it 
was a practical test of the situation. Rome was 
gaining our best men. Meanwhile no one of any 
importance ever returned. Incidentally this fear- 
someness, which my experience proves to be uni- 
versal amongst Anglicans whom I have known well, 
helped to reveal my own lack of trust in the Eng- 
lish Church. 

Before my conversion I cannot remember hav- 
ing any illusions about Rome except unpleasant ones. 
I was taught to believe that the '' Modern Roman 
Church '' was the exemplar of all that was slovenly 
and undignified in ceremonial (the great criterion 
in those days) ; harsh and overbearing in discipline; 
lax in morality; obscurantist in doctrine; and en- 
tirely out of touch with Modem Thought. This 
sounds like a very severe indictment. But, if any- 
one will take the trouble to read the High Church 
newspapers for a few weeks he will see that it is not 
overdrawn. A little grudgedly given praise is ac- 



242 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

corded now and then to Rome, but the same is not 
denied even the Non-Conformists. What I had 
seen of Catholic worship — amazingly little — was 
seen through such prejudiced eyes, that I did not 
question for many years the truth of these allega- 
tions. I assert then, most vigoirously, that I be- 
came a Catholic with unpleasant illusions as to the 
future rather than otherwise. I imagine this is the 
case with most converts. No one, indeed, likes to 
be a " new boy." I incline to the opinion that 
" Roman fever " is not a hysterical impulse to '' go 
over.'' It is rather the outcome of a desperate at- 
tempt to hold on to the Anglican Church in spite of 
conscientious fears. That is why so many seem to 
recover from it. 

I left the Anglican Church with what might be 
considered to be needless precipitancy. I had al- 
ways had my views about the decent way of becom- 
ing a Roman Catholic. Indeed I felt very indig- 
nant at the methods adopted by most converts. The 
proper course to follow would be to resign grace- 
fully from all active work as an Anglican clergy- 
man, then retire into a position of neutrality and 
there carefully think over the whole question anew, 
and at last, if necessary, after the lapse of at least 
some months, to be quietly and unobtrusively re- 
ceived into the Roman Church. When, however, 
the moment came for me to go, to have supposed 
any such neutrality possible would have been the 
merest hypocrisy; or, at least, a concession to pro- 



REV. EDWARD F. HAWKS 243 

priety which was the last thing I had time to think 
of at such a moment. When the grace of God 
brought certitude to my mind, the conviction that 
I was not in the true church, and that Rome was 
the mother and mistress of Churches, was as clean 
cut as the edge of crystal, and so it has always re- 
mained since. This being the case I scampered off, 
as nearly every convert does, as though legions of 
evil were at my heels. 

In a few days it was all over and I was hundreds 
of miles away. Together with a friend, bent on 
the same errand as myself, I sat in a Rectory wait- 
ing room, nervously wondering what would happen 
next. An elderly priest, himself a convert, of be- 
nevolent appearance, entered the room. He wore 
a beard and looked as unlike what we expected as 
possible. When he saw our anxious faces he smil- 
ingly said, '^ I was in your place once. The mo- 
ment I realized that I was not in the true Church, 
I was afraid of dying before I was received into it." 
He then playfully asked the priest who had intro- 
duced us, whether it was safe to leave us outside the 
fold overnight. We had not expected to be re- 
ceived into the Church for some months. We al- 
lowed ourselves, however, to be guided by our new 
friends, and the next morning knelt before the Altar 
of Our Lady and renounced foir all time the religion 
of Henry VHI and his daughter Elizabeth. I can- 
not recall doing anything which gave me greater re- 
lief. I know, too, that it was done without any 



244 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

elation of spirits whatever. It was as business-like 
a transaction as can be imagined. After my first 
Holy Communion, which took place a few days 
later, I remember to have been impressed with the 
thought that there was no longer any doubt but that 
I had received the true body of Christ. 

Since then the only disillusionment that I have 
known as a Catholic is the utter collapse in my mind 
of all the Anglican theories. I had intended to be 
as sympathetic as possible towards the old relation- 
ships. I believed that Catholics were much too big- 
oted in their attitude towards Anglicanism. And 
yet when I attempted afterwards to stir up a friendly 
feeling towards the old ways of thinking, they 
seemed so threadbare and barebone that it was an 
effort to do so. 

The Church was my home from the start. I have 
never felt otherwise for a moment. The incon- 
veniences that I suffered were merely those inci- 
dental to any change of residence. I made friends 
immediately with other Catholics, thoroughly un- 
derstanding their point of view. I know that I am 
absolutely contented with Catholicism — mind and 
heart. 

The question of graces received as an Anglican 
presented no difficulty in my case. I had once lived 
with a pious Congregationalist family, and amongst 
them I had learned how God can provide for those 
of His children who are separated from the cove- 
nanted means of grace. These good people lived 



REV. EDWARD F. HAWKS 245 

a supernatural Christian life. And yet, according 
to my belief as an Anglican clergyman, they were 
deprived of Sacraments that I was receiving. I 
compared them favorably with many pious mem- 
bers of my own congregation. I could see no de- 
ficiencies. The present movement towards Re- 
Union of the Protestant Churches, in which the 
Episcopal Church is taking the leading part, is after 
all only the recognition of what is becoming more 
obvious every day — the substantial agreement of 
the principal non-Catholic bodies. 

Soon after my conversion I entered a Seminary 
and lived there for several years on terms of affec- 
tion and respect for my brother Seminarians. I 
soon felt as though I had always been a Catholic. 
The others were good enough to treat me as though 
this was true. During the first year in the Sem- 
inary I went over the whole ground of my Angli- 
can theorizing in order to help two friends who 
later became Catholics. I was anxious also to un- 
derstand how I had ever believed in Anglican Or- 
ders, for I have never been able to discover a single 
Catholic who does. I see now that I had entirely 
misread the '' Apostolicce Ciircuf' More important 
still I was not aware as an Anglican that it is a 
principle of Catholic theology that Holy Orders can- 
not be exercised, of which there is reasonable un- 
certainty as to their validity. Believing that we 
had a very good case, I felt satisfied with what 
would be called a most probable opinion. I was 



246 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

not conscious of this unsatisfactory position until I 
became a Catholic. But I believe that this was how 
I stood in the matter. It is hardly necessary for me 
to state that the question has been closed for Cath- 
olics and that now I have not the least suspicion that 
Anglican Orders are valid. The Branch Theory 
used to seem plausible, although I was always hav- 
ing trouble with it when I tried to explain it fully. 
I did not dare to push it too far. But then in those 
days of theological haziness it was not safe to push 
anything too far. We were actually warned against 
being '^ too logical." 

For years before I became a Catholic I had come 
to regard the so-called Reformation and all its re- 
sults as deplorable. But I did not perceive that the 
*' Catholic Party " that held this view, was some- 
thing quite apart from the normal life of Anglican- 
ism — that it was itself a parasite sapping the 
strength of the Church to which it nominally ad- 
hered. What sympathy indeed could High Church- 
men of the new school of 1833 have with Acts of 
Supremacy and Uniformity; with the total destruc- 
tion of Catholic altars and all their furnishings; 
with the fanatical hatred of even the word '' Mass " ; 
with the martyrdom of the Marian and the Sem- 
inarist priests; with the savage attempt to suppress 
Nonconformists who refused to have their religion 
doled out by Act of Parliament or Royal warrant; 
with '' Popish Plots " and occasional Conformity 
Scandals; with the religious policy of the Houses of 



REV. EDWARD F. HAWKS 247 

Orange and Guelph? And yet are not these the 
real things in Post Reformation BngHsh Church 
History? I deplored all this, but could not see the 
true significance of it. I understand now why con- 
verts, against their better judgment, sometimes be- 
come irritating and even uncharitable when speak- 
ing of their Anglican days. It is due to their dis- 
illusionment with Anglicanism. When they leave 
it, they see the Church of England as everyone out- 
side it has' always seen it. I know this is so in my 
own case. When I was in it, I could not see the 
Anglican wood for the trees. The system had no 
definite shape in my mind. Consequently it was 
possible to ignore its separated existence and to think 
of it as only a province of the Universal Church. 
It was a purely mental fiction, this idea that Angli- 
canism was a part O'f anything. Once a Catholic, 
one quickly comes to the realization of the identity 
and unique individuality of the Church of England. 
For the first time I clearly heard her voice, recog- 
nized her policy and discovered her foundations. 

Her voice has never failed to proclaim her undy- 
ing hatred of the Roman Church. Her formularies, 
articles and service books are so arranged that every 
belief about the Constitution and Sacraments of the 
Church is tolerated except that which is exclusively 
ours. Her Councils, Synods and Conferences have 
always maintained the same attitude. She had no 
quarrel with the Puritans on doctrinal grounds. 
She was only interested in procuring an external 



248 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

uniformity with which to oppose Rome. It is the 
same with her disciphne, which is rarely exercised 
against any but those accused of " Romanismx." A 
cry of No-Popery has been the only one that has 
been able to awaken any enthusiastic response from 
her entire membership. That this cry is no longer 
effective is proof of the damage done to her influ- 
ence by the Oxford Revival. Every other move- 
ment but an Anti-Roman one, is always the work 
of a Party within the Church, not of the Church 
herself. 

Her policy, too, is fixed. She follows in the 
wake of respectability. This is as true of the 
daughter Churches in the United States and the 
Colonies as in England. Although many of her 
zealous sons have preached the Gospel to the poor, 
and have interested themselves in the masses, yet 
the great main stream flows where social power and 
mone3'ed interests are to be found. She is every- 
where the Church of the classes upon whom she de- 
pends. It is her characteristic to follow rather than 
to lead. Candid Anglicans, desirous of improving 
conditions, unconsciously bear w^itness to the belief 
that nothing will come from the Church until the 
Church is changed. They are trying to change it 
by digging new river beds in which it may flow. 
They never realize that this is a reversal of the true 
order. They have lost all idea of the Church being 
a leader of mankind. I notice this tendency in the 
interesting book of Mr. Sharpe, " Catholicism and 



REV. EDWARD F. HAWKS 249 

Life" — in which he makes some remarkable ad- 
missions. 

This policy of the Church of England of de- 
pendency upon the great ones of this world is surely 
due to her origin. That she is the creation of the 
State is the most obvious fact in her history. Some 
of the Reformed Churches were synonymous with 
the State. Many of them dominated the State. 
But in England the State made and maintained the 
Church. And in gratitude the Church has been 
her most humble obedient servant. In every emer- 
gency she has readily and willingly conformed to 
the Royal will expressed through Parliament. Only 
once did she make a protest against the Royal com- 
mands and that was when a Roman Catholic King 
wished to extend to Nonconformists and Papists 
some measure of toleration. The latest instance of 
this subserviency, to prove that it is as alive as ever, 
is the acceptance of the new marriage law by which 
a man can marry his deceased wife's sister, a union 
actually declared incestuous by the express regula- 
tions of the Anglican Church. This law has come 
into operation with hardly a murmur of opposition. 
The moment the State renounces the Church of Eng- 
land she will become, at home, what she is now in 
every British Colony, one of the smaller denomina- 
tions. In saying all this I do not forget the splen- 
did souls who have lived in good faith outside the 
visible fold of Christ. I believe that some of the 
most zealous clergymen in the world are still to be 



250 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

found in the ranks of the non-Catholic Churches. 
More than this, I believe that many of them are 
thoroughly Catholic-minded. That according to 
their opportunities they are living the CathoHc life. 
They are indeed of the soul of the Church. They 
are lights in dark places. Their work, in as far as 
it is for individual souls, will never be lost; neither 
will they lose their reward. 

To anyone who is hesitating to become a Catholic 
in fear that he will not be happy in the true Church, 
I can only say this, that his happiness will be of his 
own making. If he sincerely believes that God has 
set up His Kingdom on earth and has promised 
light and strength to the children of men in the bat- 
tle with the powers of darkness and evil; if he be^ 
lieves that the Church is the teacher and that he is 
the learner; if he believes that he must sacrifice 
everything rather than lose his soul, let him not hesi- 
tate another moment on account of fears of disap- 
pointment. The grace that has converted him to the 
Church will provide all that his soul desires or 
needs. 

When he has made this true submission of mind 
and will, not indeed to a forloim hope of peace, but 
to a clear vision of truth, then he will understand 
what it is to stand upon the rock of ages and feel 
no fear of the things of time or eternity — the hu- 
man things of the Church that fret men so much 
will all be explained. He will understand how the 
Gospel drag-net must contain the bad fish as well as 



REV. EDWARD F. HAWKS 25 1 

the good. He will learn to love the Church as it is, 
and have no ambitious notions of improving it or 
changing it. Instead of trying as he did in Angli- 
can days to make Mother Church worthy of her chil- 
dren, he will earnestly seek by Divine Grace to be 
made worthy of Mother Church. 



MRS. M. E. HILBURN, 

BALTIMORE, MD. 

(Written in her 82nd year.) 

Sister of Rev. Theodore Mead, and niece of the late Rt. Rev. 

Bishop Lyman (P. E.) of North Carolina. 

My father was a Presbyterian minister, a scholar 
and a linguist. In his study he read the Old Testa- 
ment in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek; 
of course he was also familiar with Latin. He was 
a precociously religious child, and had read the 
New Testament through when he was four years 
old, and at the age of seven he determined to devote 
himself to the ministry. Reaching manhood he 
married, and wt, his children, were brought up in 
the strictest manner and taught that we must be an 
example for other children. 

My mother died when I was four years old, and 
my father afterwards married a sister of the con- 
vert Father Lyman, though he was not a Catholic 
then. My step-mother was a lovely character and 
a very religious woman. She never became an 
Episcopalian, as did all the other members of her 
family; but embraced the Catholic faith six years 
after my father's death. From that time she was 
a most devout believer, and an earnest worker for 
the Faith. 

^52 



MRS. M. E. HILBURN 253 

I spent three years at Mt. Holyoke Seminary 
(now College), under the same rigid discipline that 
had ruled my previous life. In those days Christ- 
mas was not even observed in that institution. That 
was in 1848, and soon after my father died. In 
1852-54, I taught in a select boarding school in New 
York City. I had never loved my father's religion, 
although up to the present time I had no doubt of 
its being right; but its hold on me was not the 
allegiance of a loving devotion, so I took to going to 
church w^ith the family where my lot was now cast. 
They attended the Episcopalian ^'Church of the 
Transfiguration," later called also " The Little 
Church Around the Corner." The ladies of the 
family were very lovely and devout members of 
their church. I gradually became very fond of it 
also, and determined to study the merits of both 
sides of the question. None of my Presbyterian 
friends could give me any convincing proofs of 
what I wished ; for the Apostolic Succession seemed 
to be what I most desired to settle. Finally I 
thought I had found the truth and was confirmed 
by Bishop Wainwright. Soon after I went to ]\Iis- 
sissippi to spend the winter with my step-mother's 
oldest sister. She and her brother, Bishop Lyman, 
were Episcopalians, and they were the only mem- 
bers of the family who did not ultimately become 
Catholics. My aunt died the next summer of yel- 
low fever; I married and remained in the South. 

After the Civil War my brother, now Father 



254 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

Theodore Mead, but then a student at St. Charles, 
visited me for six months. He said but Httle to 
me about reHgion, but was very careful in the prac- 
tice of it, though he was obhged to go twenty miles 
on the railroad to attend Mass. Thus it seemed that 
almost imperceptibly the seed for my conversion 
was being sow^n. I came North with my brother in 
1866, and here I met Father Lyman, who was in- 
terested in my conversion. Believing with all his 
heart in his religion, he had wonderful power and 
is said to have made over three hundred converts. 
I had many talks with him, finding that the Apos- 
tolic Succession was still my doubting point. 
He gave me '' Geraldine, a Tale of Conscience,'' to 
read. I perused it carefully, and it settled all my 
doubts upon that point. It may seem a little strange 
that other points of doctrine did not trouble me after 
that one was settled in my mind, but Transubstan- 
tiation. Confession, etc., were received as being 
right when taught by the church that had the true 
Succession, hence I had no more doubts. 

The Plenary Council was then convening in Bal- 
timore, where my family lived, and I had the oppor- 
tunity of hearing many eloquent sermons delivered 
by learned and holy men. These sermons were of 
such a character that they were printed in America, 
and afterwards reprinted in Europe. The one that 
impressed me most was that of Father Ryan, called 
then " the silver tongued orator " ; he was after- 
wards Archbishop of Philadelphia. His subject 



MRS. M. E. HILBURN 255 

was '' The Infallibility of the Catholic Church/' I 
can still remember, after nearly forty-seven years, 
some portions of that wonderful sermon. 

Before leaving Baltimore for the South, I was 
conditionally baptized by Rev. Father Lyman and 
confirmed by Bishop Elder, then Bishop of Natchez, 
in which diocese was my home. I carried home 
with me a number of doctrinal and devotional books, 
as I needed many helps in learning the practice of 
my new faith; for there was no church wathin 
twenty miles of our house and only two Catholics 
in the town beside myself. Fortunately they were 
ladies from Baltimore, so I was not entirely alone in 
my religious life. A good French priest, living in 
Brookhaven, came to us occasionally and said Mass 
for us, using my piano for an altar. Once Mass 
was said by another priest from Natchez in my chil- 
dren's school-room, and I then had the pleasure of 
seeing the room filled with my Protestant neighbors. 
Those were pioneer days for the Church in Missis- 
sippi. The holy Bishop came to see me several 
times; and on one of his visits he lectured in the 
Court House to a crowded audience. Not long 
after he was made Archbishop of Cincinnati, to the 
great sorrow of all whom he had served so faith- 
fully. 

My husband, although a Protestant, never inter- 
fered with me in the teaching and training of our 
children. They grew up to womanhood and man- 
hood good Catholics ; but God has seen fit to take to 



256 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

Himself all but one. In 1873 my husband died, and 
in 1878 we removed to McComb City, Mississippi, 
where there was a church and many Catholics. This 
church was under the jurisdiction of the Redemptor- 
ist Fathers, who had a Novitiate near by. Soon 
after I went to McComb, they held a Mission, and as 
I had never attended one, it was a great help and 
pleasure to me, for I had few church privileges after 
becoming a Catholic, and no one knows, but one 
who has experienced the same trial, how difficult it 
is for a convert away from all religious influences 
to practice his faith. Mississippi was then a Mis- 
sionary State, and out of the cities there were few 
churches. The priests from the towns were only 
able to visit the districts, where there were a few 
Catholics, once a year. These priests were very 
poor, but I always found them faithful, holy men. 

In my early life I never met a Catholic, and the 
impressions I had of them were what I read in 
" Fox's Martyrs " and " McGavan's History," both 
of which were dreadful books for a child to peruse. 
Now I am old it is a blessing for which I cannot be 
too thankful that I myself am a Catholic. 

If I have sketched here my life before, as well as 
after, my conversion, it is because it points in a won- 
derful way my ever increasing joy and gratitude, as 
I draw near the end of my earthly pilgrimage, for 
that time, nearly fifty years ago, when the light of 
faith first dawned upon my path, and led me to the 
true fold of our dear Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. 



FRANCIS S. KENNEDY, Oxon. 

HARDISTY, ALBERTA, CANADA. 

Years ago I was sitting in the sanctum oi one. of 
the leaders of the High Anglican movement in Ox- 
ford, cordially agreeing with him as to the utter im- 
possibility of my ever becoming a " Romanist.'' A 
little later, the same man, who was my Anglican 
confessor, gave me permission to pay visits to the 
Blessed Sacrament in the Church of St. Aloysius, 
for since there was no reservation in the Anglican 
churches, it seemed quite permissible to visit Our 
Lord even if He was in one Off the sister churches 
of Rome. 

A few years later — it is now in Paris, in the 
Church of St. Genevieve, at midnight, during the 
Quarant'ore. I am surrounded by all the beauty of 
that beautiful church, banks of flowers, hundreds 
of lighted tapers ; — for amid all the varied en- 
ticements of that city of charms, it is to this Sanc- 
tuary that I have been drawn. My going there 
might seem pure accident; but I cannot think so in 
the light of future events. Surely the Sacred Host 
has drawn hither one of His wayward wanderers, 
calling him to the City of Peace. The priests who 
watch through the silent hours of the night ap- 

257 



258 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

proach me — the doors must be locked, they say, 
but I may return in the morning. 

Four or five years later, I am still spiritually 
adrift; it is now Winnipeg; I have just drifted there, 
but Winnipeg has treated me ill, I am friendless, 
far from my kin, on the brink of despair — where 
may I find a friend, where a little calm to overcome 
the bitterness of life? The Anglican Church, in 
which I was born and bred, where indeed for years 
I had intended taking Orders, is giving me nothing 
now ; — her churches are empty ; — there is no 
Presence within. So I went to the Roman Catholic 
Church of St. Mary, where I spent many hours. 
Our Lord spoke to me from within the Tabernacle 
veil and gave me courage, peace, nay life itself, un- 
til at last, at last — how long it took me, what years 
of my life were w^asted — I came Home, home to the 
faith of w^hich my ancestors robbed me some three 
hundred years ago — and it ever has been, ever 
will be, a very dear home to me. 

My occupation during the past four years has 
involved a severe physical and mental strain; it has 
precluded the possibility of my being present at 
Mass, except at long intervals — yet I have not 
been alone. For I am one of the Great Catholic 
Family; at all hours of the day and night I can lift 
up my heart and join in spirit with the Holy Sac- 
rifice of the Mass throughout the world. It pleads 
to the Precious Blood that pardon and peace may 
be mine. The Holy Mother of God is my mother, 



FRANCIS S. KENNEDY 259 

too, unworthy though I am, and as my mother I 
strive to love her with all my heart and soul ; for have 
I not implicit confidence in her? I am a member 
of the great family of the Third Order of St. Fran- 
cis, and as such am greatly strengthened in the strug- 
gle of life by the knowledge that the prayers of my 
brethren continually ascend for me. The Blessed 
Saints are my friends, and am I in trouble I seek 
their advice and ask their prayers — the Holy An- 
gels, particularly my Holy Guardian Angel, are my 
constant companions. How then can I be lonely, 
though my life be a solitary one on the prairie, as 
it has been these many years? Or should I be in 
the vaster solitude of a crowded city, the Love of 
God hems me in on every side. To me God, 
Heaven, the Blessed Virgin, the Saints and Angels 
are no mere names denoting a far off, unapproach- 
able mystery hidden behind the dense blackness of 
doubt and ignorance : to me they are all living reali- 
ties, more real than brother, and sister, and mother ; 
for brother and sister and mother are at times far, 
far away; and, individually, my brothers and sis- 
ters and mother are not of my faith; but the Love 
of the Sacred Heart continually enfolds me; the 
Blessed Sacrament is always near ; the Holy Mother, 
also, is ever near to listen to the plea of her child, 
and so I am in the constant possession of a very great 
happiness, clouded only by the knowledge of my 
own utter unworthiness. 

As a Protestant I was a very High-Church Angli- 



26o BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

can as a matter of caprice — now my whole aim 
and prayer is Thy Will, O Lord, not mine, be done. 

To conclude, I cannot state my present position 
more clearly than in the following words of Cardi- 
nal Newman, with which I am in absolute accord : 

'' I have not had one moment's wavering of trust 
in the Catholic Church ever since I was received 
into her fold. I hold and ever have held that her 
Sovereign Pontiff is the center of unity and the 
Vicar of Christ; and I have ever had and have still 
an unclouded faith in her creed in all its articles ; a 
supreme satisfaction in her worship, discipline, and 
teaching; and an eager longing, and a hope against 
hope, that the many dear friends whom I have left 
in Protestantism may be partakers of my happi- 
ness. 

'^ This being my state of mind, to add, as I hereby 
go on to do, that I have no intention, and never had 
any intention, of leaving the Catholic Church and 
becoming a Protestant again, would be superfluous, 
except that Protestants are always on the look- 
out for some loophole or evasion in a Catholic's 
statement of fact. Therefore in order to give them 
full satisfaction, if I can, I do hereby profess ' ex 
animo ' with an absolute internal assent and con- 
sent, that Protestantism is the dreariest of possible 
religions; that the thought of the Anglican service 
makes me shiver, and the thought of the Thirty- 
nine articles makes me shudder. Return to the 
Church of England! No! 'The net is broken 



FRANCIS S. KENNEDY 261 

and we are delivered/ I should be a consummate 
fool (to use a mild term) if in my old age I left the 
'land flowing with milk and honey ' for the city of 
confusion and the house of bondage." 



FRANK A. KIDD, 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 

Lecturer; editor in the Government Printing service; writer 
for the Technical Press and Trade journals; actively- 
interested in the cause of Labor and related movements 
in behalf of wage earners. 

My feeling is finely expressed by Mr. Peter H. 
Burnett in his masterly work, " The Path which 
Led a Protestant Lawyer to the Catholic Church/' 
a profound and logical book that no thoughtful 
searcher for Christian truth can read without dis- 
tinct intellectual benefit and great spiritual satis- 
faction. 

The great Doctor Johnson said: 

'^ A man who is converted from Protestantism 
to Popery may be sincere. He parts with nothing; 
he is only superadding to what he already had. But 
a convert from Popery to Protestantism gives up 
so much of what he has held sacred as anything 
that he retains, there is so much laceration of mind 
in such a conversion, that it can hardly be sincere 
and lasting." (Boswell, A. D. 1769.) 

The convert from the Catholic Church seems con- 
scious that he is embracing an inferior and lower 

a62 



FRANK A. KIDD 263 

grade of faith, and adopting a colder and more sus- 
picious estimate of human truth. He cuts himself 
loose from the holy ties that bound him to the suf- 
fering martyr-church of old. He severs all con- 
nection with the apostles, except that hidden one 
which is supposed to be buried in the darkness and 
silence of the dim distant ages of the past. He 
leaves. the sweet communion of saints, which binds 
together the children of the true faith everywhere, 
in every age, in one holy brotherhood. What are 
the heroic martyrs and saints of old to him? They 
are now become ^' mystics and visionaries." What 
to him is now the great and universal Church of the 
mighty past? Is she not presided over by ''the 
Man of Sin"? Who were the clergy oi the Old 
Church, that Church which won the world to Chris- 
tianity? To him they are now become impostors, 
who betrayed the faith of Christ. And the laity, 
who were they? Simple dupes. In short, what 
is the Christian past to such a man ? A blurred and 
blotted page for evil, and a practical blank for good. 
It is a melancholy view of Chistianity — a humih- 
ating estimate of truth — a mighty accusation 
against humanity itself. No- wonder it produces 
so much laceration of mind. No wonder that men 
who leave the Church frequently lose all faith. 

But it is not sO' with the convert to the Catholic 
Church. He is conscious that he has embraced a 
higher grade of faith, has been brought into closer 
and holier communion with the unseen world, and 



264 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

has adopted a more just and charitable estimate of 
human nature. He has taken a step towards the 
Celestial City, from the low, murky valleys of dis- 
cord, where the fogs of error love to dwell. He 
shakes hands with the brethren of every kindred, 
name, and tongue. He worships with the people 
of every nation. He joins his prayers with those 
who speak the varied languages of the earth. On 
every shore, in every land, beneath every sky, and 
in every city he meets his brethren of the universal 
Church. He is at home everywhere, and bows down 
with the millions who have worshipped and still 
worship at the same altar, and hold the same faith. 
He looks back over the pages of history, and as- 
cends by a plain, visible, and unbroken chain to- the 
apostolic day. He has no chasms to leap, no deserts 
to cross. At every step in this progress he finds 
the same Old Church, the same faith, the same wor- 
ship still preeminent in the Christian world. He 
sees the rise and fall of empires and sects; but the 
same Old Church always living and active. The 
records of the past are with him; he has the sanc- 
tion of antiquity. Time tells for him a glorious 
story. He meets with myriads of souls, one with 
him in faith all along the slumbering ages. The 
old martyrs and saints are his brethren; he claims 
companionship with them, and their memories are 
beloved by him. Blandina, the poor slave, but 
noblest of martyrs, was his sister; Ignatius and 
Polycarp and Justin, and Irenaeus are also of the 



FRANK A. KIDD ' 265 

same household of faith. And she, the humblest 
of the humble, the purest of the pure, the stainless 
Virgin Mother of his Lord, whom all generations 
■call '' blessed '' is revered by him as the noblest of 
creatures. The old apostles — the noble and the 
true — the holy and the just — -the despised and 
persecuted — they, too, are his. In short, the saints 
and martyrs of the olden time held the same faith, 
adored at the same altar, and used the same form 
of worship that he does. He venerates and loves 
their memory, admires their virtues, calls them 
brethren and asks their prayers in heaven. He has 
no accusations to bring against them — no crimes 
to lay to their charge. 

But besides all this, his faith is sustained by a 
logical power, and a Scriptural proof that can not 
be fairly met and confuted. It is upheld by every 
plain and luminous principle upon which society and 
government are founded. His reason, his common 
sense, the best feelings of his nature, the holiest 
impulses of his heart, all satisfy him without a 
shadow of doubt that he is in the right, and that 
beyond the Road to Rome he has found all that he 
hoped for. 



^ 



GUSTAF VINCENT LINDNER, 

GLEN RIDGE, NEW JERSEY. 

Journalist; member of St. Ausgar's Scandinavian Catholic 
League of New York. 

It should be easy for one who has, like myself, 
undergone a radical change from somnolent indif- 
f erentism to a live faith, to relate his experiences in 
connection with and after such an important event. 
Yet in trying to do so I am groping around vainly 
for some comparatively fixed point from which to 
start the narrative. I cannot find any. When I 
look backward, along the course of years, in an en- 
deavor to trace the development of my spiritual re- 
generation, I can hardly realize that I have ever 
been anything but a Catholic. It appears to me so 
perfectly natural to be one, that my pre-Catholic ex- 
istence almost seems but a necessary step which 
could not fail to lead, logically and inevitably, 
straight into- the true church. 

Still, it is only seven short years since my renas- 
cence in the faith of my fathers. When the grace 
of that faith was shed upon me, it obliterated in a 
nonce whatever disconnected notions I had used to 
call my religious, or perhaps rather ethical, stand- 
ards, replacing them at the same time with the truths 

2t56 



GUSTAF VINCENT LINDNER 267 

of its own divine source. It was not for me to stop 
and analyze this doctrine, or that one. Not for a 
second did it occur to me that I ought to satisfy my- 
self, i. e., my reason, that my new condition was not 
a result of some transient sentimental impulse. The 
" pros " and ^^ cons " seemed to have fought their 
battle to a finish beforehand, and I, unaware and 
unworthy, had only to enjoy the fruits of victorious 
truth. 

Having been brought up as a Lutheran in the 
ultra-Protestant country of Sweden, I had always 
looked upon the Catholic Church as a thoroughly 
corrupt body — a mere sham of a religious institu- 
tion, maintained principally for the aggrandize- 
ment of its hierarchy at the material and intellectual 
expense of the most ignorant and slave-bound part 
of humanity. True, I made no effort to find out 
how substantial was the foundation on which I had 
built up this opinion. But what was the use, any- 
way? I need only turn to my national history to 
learn that my conception o-f Catholicism had been 
shared by the greatest heroes of my country who 
had fought and bled in that pitiful war of thirty 
years, in order to relieve the Teuton nations of the 
yoke under which an imperious papacy had been 
whipping them along for centuries. 

With such ideas, which remained well rooted in 
my mind, even after I had abandoned not only the 
Lutheran sect but every other form of religious 
worship, I naturally felt very indignant when it was 



268 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

suggested to me, a few years ago, that I might be- 
come a CathoHc. I a Catholic! What would my 
high-browed friends and associates say ? How could 
I continue to bear my good old Protestant father's 
name and be a Catholic? Impossible, unthinkable! 

And yet the thing happened, thanks to the char- 
itable mercy of the Almighty, Who knows of no 
impossibility and Whose plans our little brains are 
too weak even to surmise. As I have already inti- 
mated, I am unable to go into details describing my 
period of transformation and the impressions I then 
received. The visible factors in my conversion — 
or should I call it awakening ? — were a Paulist 
mission service, which I had condescended to attend, 
as an act of grudging courtesy, and a truly fatherly 
parish priest in Brooklyn. When I became aware 
of the changed state of my mind, I went to the lat- 
ter and told him briefly of what had happened to 
me. ^' I have come back, Father," I concluded, fol- 
lowing up my irrepressible notion that I had only 
been away a short time, although it was almost four 
hundred years since my forebears had stepped off 
the road of Rome. " Welcome home, son ! This 
is Faith, — this is Grace," was the plain reply of the 
sympathetic pastor, whose spiritual gaze took in the 
situation at once and gave it its terse, yet true and 
only definition. 

Have I had any difficulties since entering the 
Church ? None at all. From the very first I have 
felt at home. As I had had doctrines and discipline; 




GUSTAF VINCENT LINDNER 269 

devotions, ceremonies and usages explained to me, 
they appeared perfectly familiar, and when anything 
supposedly new was unfolded to me, I seemed to 
have anticipated it just as it proved to be. I recol- 
lect now, that time and again there recurred to my 
memory, as it does yet every once in a while, a 
phrase from the Ovid of my school days : 

" Omnia iam fient. Fieri quae posse negabam : 

Et nihil est de quo non sit habenda fides/' 
(All things will now come to pass which I used 
to say would never happen; and there is nothing 
which is not worthy of belief.) 

In regard to my daily life, conditions have 
changed so far, that I am now able to face almost 
any situation with comparative equanimity, know- 
ing that as long as I can persevere in my humble ef- 
forts to cooperate with God's will, anything that 
may happen is for the best. In these endeavors I 
receive inestimable support from my companionship 
in the Third Order of Saint Francis and all it im- 
plies. My reverence for the Blessed Mother of 
God and the Saints, and my recourse to them for 
intercession, have always been a source of great 
comfort in my daily toil. More particularly have 
I been attracted by those grand exponents of 
Christ's true Order of nobility, the " Poverello " of 
Assisi and his spiritual brother, St. Anthony of 
Padua. 

Socially my status has not been noticeably changed 
by my becoming a Catholic. Some of my former 



270 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

associates have avoided me, not because of any dis- 
approval of my act — pretty near all of my old ac- 
quaintances were rather indifferent in religious mat- 
ters and did not care whether I was a Catholic or 
anything else — but more likely for the reason that 
my company was no longer " congenial." Perhaps 
they feared that some chance influence on my part 
might make them feel uncomfortable, as, from their 
point of view, they would consider any spiritual 
awakening. Only once has a person of my own na- 
tionality given an open manifestation — and a very 
unmistakable one, at that — of his abhorrence at the 
idea of being a Catholic. It was a Salvation Army 
man, neither friend nor acquaintance, who came to 
collect old wearing apparel for charity. A casual 
remark made him aware of the fact that he was 
talking to a Catholic, and it almost stunned him. 
As soon as he recovered from the first prolonged 
gasp of horror, he shouted in a tone of utmost re- 
pugnance at the awful combination : '' Swedish 
Catholics ! Swedish Catholics ! " and made for the 
hall door in hottest haste, as if he imagined that the 
evil one himself was after him. This incident was 
in a way amusing, but it pained me, too, to think 
how deeply bigoted prejudice had sunk into the 
minds of our otherwise good and honest Swedish 
people. The greater part of them are, I believe, 
perfectly sincere in their convictions, and I surely 
respect them for that ; perhaps more now than I did 
before I had any decided tendencies in a religious 



1 



GUSTAF VINCENT LINDNER 27 1 

direction myself. Would that God in His merci- 
ful grace might confer on my kinsmen and com- 
patriots of the mighty Norse race, the same favor 
with which He has blessed me, the incomparable 
grace of the true Faith. 



HUGH FRASER MACKINTOSH, 

TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA. 

Author ; editor ; founder and one time Editor of the Catholic 
Weekly Review, Toronto ; author of Life of Father 
Louis dell Vagua (Capuchin) 1888; Life of Bishop Mac- 
donell, first Bishop of Kingston; Life of Bishop Power, 
first Bishop of Toronto, 1892; contributor of articles to 
Century Magazine, Records of Amer. Cath. Hist. Society 
of Philadelphia, etc. 

To be asked, as a convert, to give one's reasons 
for being satisfied to remain a Catholic after some 
years' experience in the Church is, I apprehend, 
something like a shipwrecked man being asked to 
give a reason for remaining safely in the lifeboat 
after being rescued from the deep, rather than to 
trust himself once more to the mercy of the waves. 
To be faithless now to one's trust and to turn one's 
back upon so great a mercy would in truth be moral 
and spiritual suicide. I came into the Church thirty 
years ago under the firm conviction that it was the 
sole depository of God's revelation and the channel 
of His mercies, and the only answer I can now give 
to the question that has been asked of me is that I 
have never wavered in that belief. The conviction 
is as fresh and fixed to-day as it was on the day of 
my reception, with this difference, that whereas then 

2^2 



HUGH FRASER MACKINTOSH 273 

everything was, humanly speaking, new and un- 
tried, to-day I have long years of blessed experience 
to look back upon, and can say with a full heart that 
of the treasures that I had been led to look for in 
the Catholic Church '* not one-half had been told 
me." 

By this I do not mean to say that I have had noth- 
ing to try me, or that I have found Catholics indi- 
vidually less human than those I had left behind. 
Nor, I am persuaded, have my experiences been ex- 
ceptional in this regard. Human nature is the same 
the world over, and Catholics are no more exempt 
than others from its frailties. I became a Catholic 
under no false conception of life, and consequently 
there was in my case none of that '' opening of the 
eyes to realities " which Protestants are so fond of 
predicting for the Catholic convert. But what I 
have found in the Church is a reality of faith and 
a depth of conviction among her children — a simple 
belief in all that she teaches as the undoubted word 
of God, which has no parallel in the world outside. 
Religion I have found to be like a second nature 
with the general run of Catholics, and faith like a 
simple habit of mind. There may be — there un- 
doubtedly are — occasions when some of them may 
chafe under this or that ecclesiastical regulation, or 
in a society preponderatingly Protestant, give way 
to that insidious evil, human respect. Under such 
contingencies the practice of their religion may be- 
come half-hearted, or even cease entirely. But un- 



274 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

less faith altogether vanishes (and there is always 
a mahgnant internal reason for that), the old habit 
in time reasserts itself, and they sooner or later 
return to their allegiance. They at least secretly 
cherish the desire to do so, though it goes without 
saying that grace, in this particular as in others, may 
be, and often is, trifled with too long. But, as to 
the disposition I speak of, my experience is that 
there is absolutely no parallel among those outside 
the Catholic Church. 

In the matter of CathoHc practices all I have to 
say is that when I came into the Church I did so 
with the idea that, as Cardinal Newman has so well 
expressed it, it is not for the convert to pick and 
choose. I came rather with a deep sense of God's 
mercy in bestowing upon me the gift of faith and 
was satisfied to go to school again, and so far as the 
human element was concerned, to take things as I 
found them. And, as I may be permitted to repeat, 
I have in no sense been disappointed. In addition 
to the spirit of faith I have referred to, I have found 
among practicing Catholics a truer appreciation of 
their moral obligations, and a keener sense of devo- 
tion than I had hitherto experienced ; and among the 
clergy and religious, a spirit of consecration that is 
quite impossible elsewhere. 

I say nothing of the riches of devotion which I 
have found in the Church; of their adaptability 
to every condition of human life; or of the kinship 
with the ages w^hich is the common heritage of her 



d 



HUGH FRASER MACKINTOSH 275 

children. These are but the accidents, though 
withal adding beyond measure to the wealth of their 
heritage. I have in mind the answer given by a 
Bishop of my acquaintance to a Protestant minister 
who had ventured the statement that he had prayed 
for the Bishop's " conversion." " I can assure 
you," was the reply, " that I am not flattered to hear 
you say so. You give small credit to my reason and 
common sense to presume for an instant to think 
that I could leave the old historic Church of Chris- 
tendom, to put it on no higher ground, for a mis- 
erable little petty sect of yesterday." 

For the rest I can but say that I have had occasion 
every day of my life to thank God for His unspeak- 
able mercy in bestowing upon me the great gift of 
faith, and, despite my own shortcomings, to rejoice 
in the day that saw me admitted to the Communion 
of His Church. A convert may not say more: can 
he very well say less? 



WILLIAM MARKOE, 

WHITE BEAR LAKE, MINN. 

Dictated to his son, and signed by himself, August 25, 1913, 
when he was ninety-three years and one month old, and 
when he had been for over fifty-eight years a Catholic, 
having entered the Church August 2, 1855. 

Never, for a moment, under any circumstances, 
has the shadow of a doubt entered my mind, as to 
the wisdom and the divine guidance which brought 
me into the true fold of Christ. I need only add 
that the more I have learned of her wonderful sys- 
tem and her divine guidance each year, the greater 
has become my gratitude to Almighty God for hav- 
ing led me from the confusions of Protestantism to 
the clear and divine light of His everlasting truth. 



276 



REDFERN MASON, 

CARMEL, CALIFORNIA. 

Writer on music and the drama; connected with Birming- 
ham (Eng.) Gazette 1887-1890; with Rochester, N. Y., 
Post-Express, 1900-1911. Author of "The Song Lore of 
Ireland," "Musical Cameos"; contributor to Atlantic 
Monthly, etc. 

It was Dante who gave me my first impulse to- 
wards Catholicism — not the Paradiso, that was a 
little too rarefied for my young man's mind to 
grasp — but the Purgatorio; and later studies have 
only deepened my earlier impressions. The Low 
Church Protestantism in which I had been brought 
up had crumbled before the irony of the eigliteenth 
century French rationalists and the materialism of 
Huxley. Dante gave me Christian doctrine en- 
dowed with reasonableness and poetical beauty. The 
doctrine of Purgatory, as set forth in the pages of 
the Florentine, so moved me that I wanted to believe. 
That was the beginning of my Catholic history. 
Voluntas credendi est initium crcdenthim, says St. 
Anselm, and his words proved true in my case. That 
I had ever utterly cast ofif my belief in the Di- 
vinity of Christ I doubt; but the aridity and cold- 
ness of Protestantism starved my soul. I longed 
for a faith that would satisfy my reason, appeal to 

277 



278 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

my imagination, and give food to my emotional na- 
ture. This the CathoHcism of Dante did. When 
the poet asks his dead friend Forese how it is that 
he has made such progress in the work of purifica- 
tion, the suffering shade repHes that he has been 
helped by the prayers and tears of his Nella. That 
answer, one of many such in Dante, has always 
gladdened my soul. It seems as if there had been 
revealed to me a page of God's truth which, through 
some dark mischance, had hitherto been hidden. 
When my father died, a year or two before I be- 
came a Catholic, my mother told me that, in her 
prayers, she whispered '' God bless John," though 
she did not dare to pray the words. But here in 
this glorious Church of hoar antiquity men and 
w^omen are encouraged to pray for those who have 
passed out of life into the beyond, nay, it is made 
a virtue for them to do so. Dante taught me more ; 
he makes clear to me that the saints in heaven are 
not mere well-wishers, but friends who can help 
me and only long for me to ask them to do so. 
Here again the old Church seems not only beauti- 
ful in her faith, but reasonable as well; for it has 
struck me as contrary to common sense that the liv- 
ing apostles, still burdened with the sins of human- 
ity, should be able to pray for mankind, and yet, 
when they put off the frailties of nature and become 
the sharers of God's bliss, they should not be able to 
do so. 

At the time when Dante made his first deep mark 



REDFERN MASON 279 

Upon me, I was a reporter in Birmingham, and it 
was my duty, on occasion, to go to the Oratory to 
make inquiries about the health of Cardinal New- 
man. Once I heard him speak ; it was three words 
only, but the most solemnly comforting in the whole 
liturgy of the Church, the words " Requiescat in 
pace," pronounced in the Requiem for Bishop Ulla- 
thorne. The next time I saw him he lay in state 
between a double line of praying men and women. 
Under the influence of that spiritual Caesar, the in- 
herited prejudices of Protestantism faded out of 
my mind. How great those prejudices were may 
be gathered from the fact that, in my boyhood days, 
I never dared to enter the Catholic church which I 
passed almost daily, though the door was always 
open and I was always conscious of a vague desire 
to go inside. But Newman dead, and Newman liv- 
ing in the printed page, gave me confidence. The 
argument that conquered me and made a Catholic 
of me was the contention in " The Development of 
Christian Doctrine " that, if God had given man- 
kind a revelation, He must have instituted some 
means by which that revelation might be authori- 
tatively explained. What body could claim tliat 
office? The Catholic Church was the only one. I 
looked for a church that was one, holy, powerful, 
everywhere active. The Established church could 
not possibly be that body, for the Bishop of Liver- 
pool had recently declared that there was a funda- 
mental difference among Anglicans concerning the 



28o BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

office of the clergy, one party regarding them as 
ministers in the Dissenting sense of the word, the 
other regarding them as a sacerdotal priesthood. 
Yet the Anglican body did not, apparently dared not, 
take a definite stand on the subject and say that 
its clergy were either ministers or priests. Then 
again, the Bishop of Worcester had suggested the 
union of the Established church with the churches 
not claiming apostolic succession. This he did on 
the basis of the historic episcopate, not, as he ex- 
plained, that the body was the esse of the church, 
but that it was the benesse. Yet in the same Es- 
tablishment were men like the Bishop of Lincoln, 
men so strongly afifected towards the Catholic posi- 
tion as to be regarded by the ultra-Protestant ele- 
ment as " Romanizers." Only in Rome did I find 
authority which could deal with questions as they 
arose and cast out error when it was found to exist. 
Had I foreseen the Church's action on modernism 
it would only have confirmed my views. 

So, after instruction, I made my submission and 
was received into the Church. Never w^hen in a 
state of grace have I had any doubts as to the 
Church's divine appointment and mission. She 
works through human instruments and there have 
been Judases in high places. But they have never 
made her anything but what her Master's promise, 
her history, and the comfort she gives to the peni- 
tent sinner, declare her to be — the divinely ap- 
pointed interpreter of the Will of God. Where 



1 



REDFERN MASON 28 1 

Others promise and disappoint, she fulfills. If only 
Protestants and unbelievers could know the peace 
that comes into the soul of the Catholic when he 
returns from the confessional after penitently pour- 
ing forth the story of his sins, faithfully resolving 
to mend his life, and after receiving absolution from 
the priest, they would recognize that the Catholic 
Church can give happiness not in the world's gift. 
And after that comes union with Our Lord Himself 
in Holy Communion, not a figure or symbol, but the 
very body of Him who died for us on Calvary. 



THE REV. B. W. MATURING 

LONDON, ENGLAND. 

Author of The Price of Unity; Practices of the Spiritual Life; 
Self Knowledge and Self Discipline, etc. Sometime mem- 
ber of the Anglican Society of St. John the Evangelist. 

If the witness of one . . . wanderer from the 
Anglican fold may be added to that of many far 
greater and more worthy than he, he would say that 
he has found all and more than he had ever hoped 
to find. 

The last step must always be a step in the dark, 
a venture O'f faith. And up to the very last, fears 
and doubts and anxieties must dog one's steps. Old 
prejudices die hard and follow one to the end. 
Things that have been said, as to what one will find 
when the irrevocable step has been taken, come to 
his ears like voices in the night and fill the soul with 
fear. 

That fair Vision of the city of God as he had 
seen it for years, pales and grows dimmer as he 
draws nearer. What shall he find when he has 
passed through the valley and climbed the moun- 
tains and entered the gates? His ideal becomes 

1 From " The Price of Unity," printed with the author's 
permission. 



REV. B. W. MATURIN 283 

clouded and its glory fades away. Perhaps after 
all he has been mistaken, deluded by the difficulties 
that he saw and felt, to build for himself the Vision 
of a City that exists nowhere upon this earth. All 
his past rises up and cries out against him, it has 
all been the delusion of a fertile imagination, draw- 
ing pictures in the clouds of contrasts with trials he 
had not the courage to bear. Old associations, 
memories of hopes that once had been the breath 
of his nostrils, and inspired enthusiasms for the 
cause he had once held so dear, sweep over him 
with a devastating and blinding force. The thought 
of the friendships of a lifetime cling around him 
with endearing memories, what will they think of 
him, a deserter from their ranks, a traitor to the 
cause they had championed together? One more 
gone over toi those who do not understand them and 
so bitterly oppose them. 

How lightly people talk of going over to Rome. 
How lightly he had talked himself. It seemed so 
easy in the distance, so almost impossible as the 
hour draws near. The Vision that so long sus- 
tained him has gone, and left behind it nothing but 
the convictions that forced him on, and in the hour 
of need have lost all their glow, all their vivid ap- 
peal, and beat upon the will with dull, heavy, and 
relentless blows. He had often been told that he 
had not the courage to endure the difficulties in 
which God had placed him. Well, now his courage 
is put to the test, a courage which demands that he 



284 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

should strip himself of all the ccMnpanionships and 
associations of a lifetime, to go forth a stranger 
amongst an imknown people and to an unknown 
land 

And so in darkness and tears and bitter anguish 
he goes forth, feeling only that he must go, that for 
good or e\-il the accumulated thought and workings 
of his mind for years must now have their way. 
And once more a lonely pilgrim steps forth into the 
darkness, and passes within the gates through which 
so many others have entered in solitude before him. 
And when the strain has passed and the novelty 
of the new conditions into which he has come be- 
gins to wear away, ar.i he is able to look aroimd him 
with calmness, and. to understand something of 
what the change means, he is asked. Was it worth 
it? Has the gain been worth the wrench, and the 
cost, and the risk of the change ? And he answers, 
Yes, it was wcwth it, worth more if necessar}% The 
difference is so great that it is difl&cult to measure 
or explain it It is only as the years go by that one 
realizes how far one has travelled from one's former 
standpoint, and how great the change is. I do not 
mean so much in the details of faith, as in the whole 
comprehensive idea of what the Qiurch is, and 
what it is to be in a chiu"ch that is always conscious 
of its own Divine authority and commission, and 
makes it felt from the highest to the lowest. You 
feel that you are in an organization that has en- 
diu"ed the test of ::n:e and the assaults of manv an- 



REV. B. W. MATURIN 285 

tagonists, whose foundations are built into the soHd 
Rock against which the Gates of Hell cannot pre- 
vail, that you breathe an atmosphere in which your 
own weak faith is braced and strengthened by the 
faith of a vast multitude, and is supported by an 
authority upon which you can rest. You feel in- 
deed like an exile who' has returned to his Father- 
land. There is a strange sense of coming to a land, 
and amongst a people, to whom you always be- 
longed, though you did not know it. The surprises 
that meet you are surprises that seem to awaken 
memories of some long forgotten past. It takes 
but a short time for a newcomer to feel as if he had 
been always there. All that was true in his former 
beliefs find their home and their place in the at- 
mosphere to which they belong and from which they 
have been taken. They are like strains from some 
great symphony, whose full beauty is only recog- 
nized when the whole is heard. 

To one who, like myself, came into the Church 
when middle life was well past, there has not been 
much of the sense of exaltation which some have 
spoken of, still less has there ever been any feeling 
of bitterness or contempt for what I have left. But 
there has been an ever-deepening sense of certainty 
and security and peace, with moments of intense re- 
alization of the glory and strength of the City of 
God, whose Walls are salvation and whose Gates 
are peace. 



WILLIAM STETSON MERRILL, A.B., 

(Harvard), 
Assistant Librarian, the Newberry Library, Chicago. 

AMien I told a friend who had tried to dissuade 
me from changing my rehgion that I had become 
a CathoHc, he gave me this parting advice : " Go 
to the best churches, hear the best preachers, listen 
to the best music, and I give you one year." This 
prophecy of my friend was not fulfilled, either within 
the year or within the more than twenty years that 
have since elapsed. AMiat prompted him to make it 
was doubtless some such thought as this : The 
glamour of the Catholic ritual and the novel force of 
Catholic claims have beguiled this convert into 
joining a religious body w^hose spirit is so foreign 
to American ways of thinking that he can never 
feel at home there and will sooner or later come 
back. 

Such has not been my experience nor do I think 
it is the experience of any rightly instructed convert. 
Music and ceremonial may, indeed, attract the non- 
Catholic at the beginning : I first went to a Catholic 
church to hear the music. Special features of the 

286 



WILLIAM STETSON MERRILL, A.B. 287 

Church will appeal to different individuals. One 
may admire her organization, another her unity, 
another her historic continuity, another the life of 
her religious orders. But all of these he might ad- 
mire without becoming a Catholic ; some free-think- 
ers to'-day pride themselves upon the breadth of 
their sympathies and upon their freedom from big- 
otry. The inquirer becomes a convert when he is 
convinced not only that the Catholic Church is 
worthy of his allegiance but that she has a claim 
upon his allegiance, and that it is his duty to be- 
come a Catholic. If the grace of God now leads 
him to take the step that his reason tells him is right, 
then conviction becomes conversion. 

But the land into which the convert has come, 
though a goodly land, is a strange one to him. The 
people are not his people nor are their ways his 
ways. They view many things in a different light 
from that in which he has been accustomed to view 
them. Catholic young men play base-ball on Sun- 
day afternoon; the pastor of the church where he 
attends Mass may even anno'unce the game from the 
pulpit. Although the position of the Catholic 
Church regarding innocent amusement on Sunday 
afternoon is a perfectly fair one, yet a convert reared 
in an intellectual atmosphere that retains any trace 
of Puritan influence will feel a certain shock at 
Sunday ball, and this feeling will be slow to pass 
away. On the other hand, in my own case, I did 
not, upon first becoming a Catholic, feel that horror 



288 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

of divorce and remarriage that I found common 
among Catholics, simply because I had always 
looked upon the matter as one of social well-being. 
As the convert comes to apply Catholic principles 
to test moral and social questions, he finds these 
principles sound and worthy of more consideration 
than they ordinarily receive from non-Catholics. 

Priests prove to be quite different from a con- 
vert's preconception of them. They are, as a class, 
neither haughty and unapproachable, nor ignorant 
and vulgar. Their long training for the priesthood 
and their intimate knowledge of human character, 
as they come to know it through the confessional, 
give them a broad human sympathy and a normal 
standard of judging human nature that is surpris- 
ing. One finds in the Catholic priest none of the 
cant, the obtrusive sanctity, the narrowness of view, 
the eccentricity of manner that is sometimes found 
in the *^ evangelist." While there is a line of de- 
marcation between the priest and the layman, there is 
no such wall of separation between clergy and peo- 
ple as the convert has been told there is. The Cath- 
olic feels and manifests more profound reverence 
for the priest than the Protestant shows for the 
" minister." The priest's position is recognized by 
all and he has no need to proclaim it. He never 
talks theology in company unless asked to do so, 
and he certainly never questions persons whom he 
meets as to the state of their souls. 

The petty standard of contribution to church sup- 



WILLIAM STETSON MERRILL, A.B. 289 

port IS a surprise to the convert. He may feel 
ashamed, some Sunday morning, at putting only a 
dime in the contribution box and wonders if the 
usher noticed it. Later he learns that the nickel is 
the unit of the church collection and the ushers are 
surprised at finding dimes in the basket. As a boy 
the convert may have heard people remark upon 
the ^' avarice " of the Catholic priest and how he 
bulldozes ignorant servant girls into giving half of 
their wages toward building a new church. Now 
he wonders how the priests have any money at all 
left to put into stones and mortar. " How do the 
clergy ever accomplish sO' much with such nig- 
gardly contributions ? " he asks a Catholic neigh- 
bor. " Well, for one thing," the other replies, " the 
priest's salary is not so large as the Protestant pas- 
tor's." " But a large church like ours must pay 
the pastor at least $2,500," remarks the convert. 
The neighbor laughs. ^^ Father O'— gets $600 as 
his salary and funds tO' support the rectory." The 
convert may well be astonished. I believe if the 
financial budgets of the Catholic clergy and sister- 
hoods were published to the world, the figures would 
not be believed, in this age of high cost of living 
and luxuries. One can scarcely imagine the result 
if Catholics were compelled, for one thing, to pay 
all the teaching orders the same grade of salary that 
is paid in the public schools. What would become 
of Catholic education? 

Some personal surprises are in store for the con- 



290 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

vert. He meets an acquaintance one day at a 
Catholic bookstore. ''You here!" he exclaims. 
*' What brings you to a Catholic bookstore?" 
'' \Miy not? " replies the other. '' I am a Catholic 
and always have been; but I didn't know you were 
one." The interchange of confidences that follows 
creates a new bond of sympathy between them. 
The mental horizon of each changes. Both are 
aware of a community of interests that they had 
not suspected before. A confession of this kind 
always makes me feel more at home with the per- 
son making it. If I take lunch with him down town, 
on an Ember day, I don't have to decline meat and 
then explain why I don't take it, although the day is 
not Friday. He will not urge me to go with him 
to hear some noted Protestant divine. Ha non- 
Catholic does so, I must not only excuse myself but 
tackle that somewhat embarrassing task of trying to 
convince him why I am not narrow-minded in act- 
ing as I do. n I am with Catholics, and the con- 
versation drifts into educational lines, I feel free to 
talk about the excellent new school erected in my 
parish, to which I send my children; and I am not 
immediately called upon to deliver an apolog}^ for 
not making use of the equally excellent public school 
in my neighborhood, where my children may receive 
an education at no expense to me. What a relief, 
indeed ! I may even describe with gentle irony the 
singing at the country church where I heard ]\Iass 
during my summer vacation without thereby giving 



WILLIAM STETSON MERRILL, A.B. 291 

scandal and prejudicing some non-Catholic who had 
heard that " Catholic music is so grand." How; 
careful we all have to be, when outsiders ask us 
questions about the Church! Is it surprising that 
Catholics enjoy one another's company and make 
of their parish a little social center? The convert 
did not use to understand that; he used to think 
Catholics very clannish. As he goes more to Cath- 
olic gatherings, hears Catholic ideas expressed and 
sees Catholic principles of life applied in the lives 
of those around him, the convert comes impercepti- 
bly to fall into a Catholic frame of mind. Whereas 
he had at first felt out of his sphere, now he finds 
himself adapted to a new sphere; he feels at home 
in the Catholic Church. 

Two features of the Church have always inter- 
ested and attracted me: one is her consistency, the 
other is her catholicity. The perfect accord of 
Catholic practice with Catholic belief is in itself a 
mark of stability and truth. This is notably the 
case with the doctrine of the Incarnation. Catholics 
alone, of all Christians — save perhaps the Greek 
Church — seem to realize the full significance of the 
phrase He " was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the 
Virgin Mary and was made man." Devotion to 
the Blessed Virgin is the natural and fitting out- 
come of belief in this stupendous fact. Non-Cath- 
olics may say with their lips that Christ was God 
and was born of Mary ; but they will not say " Mary, 
the Mother of God," thereby betraying their lack 



292 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

of real faith in the Incarnation. They may talk of 
the communion of saints, but they have no real com- 
munion with the saints. A few Anglicans pray to 
the saints in times of danger or of sorrow; but even 
the Anglicans ridicule prayers to St. Anthony for 
petty temporal favors : as if the doctrine implied 
that the saints were aristocrats, too high and mighty 
to concern themselves about minor matters. 

Catholics take the words of our Lord in their lit- 
eral sense when the context shows plainly that He 
intended them to be so understood. Non-Catholics 
are less concerned to ascertain what our Lord meant 
than what He ought to have meant to bring His 
words into harmony with the spirit of this age. The 
argument for the Real Presence, simply and forcibly 
put by Cardinal Gibbons in his '' Faith of Our 
Fathers,'' has always seemed to me unanswerable 
by anyone who concedes the authenticity of the 
Gospels. After Christ had said " Unless ye eat the 
flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye shall 
not have life in you,'' we are told that some " mur- 
mured and walked no more with Him," evidently 
because they took His words literally. Christ not 
only said nothing to correct such an interpretation 
of His words but even reiterated them to His dis- 
ciples and then asked: ^^ Will ye go likew^ise? " 

The doctrine of the Holy Eucharist pervades 
Catholic theology as the theory of gravitation enters 
into the natural sciences. Our worship is meaning- 
less without it; with it, every act, every symbol is 



WILLIAM STETSON MERRILL, A.B. 293 

fraught with meaning. We beheve that Christ is 
present on the altar and we bow the knee before 
Him; in passing a church a man Hfts his hat and a 
woman crosses herself. By Holy Communion we 
" become partakers of His Godhead who vouchsafed 
to become partaker of our manhood," as the Or- 
dinary of the Mass so wonderfully expresses it. 
Consistency is characteristic of Catholicity as incon- 
sistency is characteristic of Protestantism. Cath- 
olicity affirms, embraces ; Protestantism denies, criti- 
cises. 

Catholicity is to me the most stately of the notes 
of the Church. It is like a cathedral in its gran- 
deur ; lofty and solemn like the Gothic aisle, elevating 
like the spires pointing heavenward; resonant and 
stirring like the chimes in the belfry. Besides con- 
noting the universal mission of the Church to all 
men, catholicity suggests to my mind the compre- 
hensiveness and finality of the Catholic Church. 
She not only teaches to mankind the truths neces- 
sary to salvation but she embraces within the unity 
of her system all truths attained by human wisdom, 
genius and inquiry. Painted by the hand of Ra- 
phael upon the walls of the Camera della Segnatura 
of the Vatican, at the command of Pope Julius H, 
are four frescoes representing respectively Theology, 
Philosophy, Poesy and Jurisprudence — " the four 
grand centers around which intellectual life re- 
volves," as Miss Starr calls them in her monu- 
mental work upon the subject. Nothing could 



294 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

teach more plainly the catholicity of the Church and 
the place which all knowledge and achievement hold 
in her estimation than these symbolical works of 
art adorning the Capitol of the Catholic world. 

Theology, philosophy, canon law, painting, sculp- 
ture, education, all point to the universality of the 
Church. The most precious literary and artistic 
monuments of the ancient world have been preserved 
to us by the Church. The most valuable codex of 
the Bible is in the Vatican Library; her museum- 
contains the masterpieces of Greek art; historical 
scholars from all over the w^orld flock to Rome to 
use the Vatican Archives.. The theological system 
of the Church has been built up by intellectual giants 
from St. Augustine to St. Thomas. The official 
philosophy taught in her seminaries is the w^ork of 
the keen intellects of the middle ages, based upon 
Aristotle, '' the Master of those who know," as 
Dante calls him. The work of St. Thomas is a 
marvel of patient and critical examination of all 
human learning, so far as known to him at the time ; 
an impartial synthesis of whatever commended it- 
self to his comprehensive mind, and could be 
brought into agreement with the teachings of divine 
revelation. The revival of the philosophical prin- 
ciples of Scholasticism by Pope Leo XIII and the 
enthusiastic application of these principles, by the 
New Scholastics, to the solution of social and 
metaphysical questions of to-day, have shown how 
enduring are these fundamental teachings of the 



WILLIAM STETSON MERRILL, A.B. 295 

Schoolmen. I may remark that after a study of 
EngHsh and German philosophy under such illus- 
trious teachers as Bowen, James and Royce, it re- 
mained for me toi discover in a little manual written 
by a Jesuit of Stonyhurst a theory of the nature of 
knowledge that illuminated the whole history of 
speculation on that subject and offered a solution 
of problems that I had sought in vain from modern 
thinkers. 

But why, we may ask, has the Church, if she is 
truly so Catholic in her spirit, opposed science at 
times and hindered the course of free inquiry? The 
answer is two-fold : (2) The Church does not op- 
pose science or research of any kind as such, but 
only conclusions of science that contradict the 
truths of divine revelation; (2) the Church has a 
duty and a right to maintain the truths of revela- 
tion just as science has a duty and a right to seek 
truth in the natural order. Between these two or- 
ders of truth there can be no fundamental and final 
contradiction; but adjustment of apparently diverg- 
ing conclusions presents a difficulty. The history 
of what has been called the " conflict of science and 
religion " is really the history of efforts to solve a 
series of grave problems. The difficulty has been 
to discern the line between revealed truths and 
merely human opinion or tradition. If the Church 
has at times, in her praiseworthy zeal to maintain 
revealed truths, displayed a lack of consideration 
for scientific theories, so scientists, in asserting the 



296 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

rights of reason, have manifested indifference to- 
ward revelation. The error in viewing the situa- 
tion has been to overlook the rights of revelation 
altogether and to judge the matter entirely from 
the point of view of science. 

Perhaps as a convert I may be asked how I have 
reconciled myself to that disciplinary action of the 
Church upon Catholic writers that seems to out- 
siders so at variance with freedom of speech. 
Nothing, I suppose, that takes place within the 
Church causes non-Catholics more instantly to take 
sides against the Church than a report, circulated 
through the press, that such-and-such a Catholic 
writer has been " condemned by the Church " and 
his works have been '' put on the Index." No mat- 
ter what the man has written, he is a seeker after 
truth and the Church will have none of it. So he 
is a '' martyr." 

The situation may be viewed from the point of 
view either of the author censured or of the Church. 
So far as he is concerned, discipline is no doubt 
trying; but is it any more so than criticism from 
colleagues who may " tear him all to pieces " ? 
Nothing could be more trjang to my mind than the 
typical mode of " taking an author down " by show- 
ing up one error and giving the reader to understand 
that the book fairly teems with similar mistakes 
which could be shown up if the critic had more 
time. The Catholic author gets no such treatment 
as that from the Congregation of the Index. Nor 



WILLIAM STETSON MERRILL, A.B. 297 

does examination of an author accused of heresy 
necessarily mean condemnation. The adversaries 
of the philosopher Rosmini Serbati endeavored 
to secure his condemnation on two occasions, and 
the result of the examination — in one case the Pope 
himself presided — was complete vindication. 
From the point of view of the Church, some action 
of the kind is justifiable in writings touching upon 
religion, whereas scientific matters having no re- 
ligious bearing may be left for the scientists to de- 
cide among themselves. The Church is not a Royal 
Society for the Investigation of Theology, but a 
Teacher, divinely commissioned by Christ to show 
mankind the road to salvation. A difference in the 
methods to be pursued may reasonably be expected. 
In closing I may say that I have never regretted 
the step I took in becoming a Catholic nor have I 
ever had my confidence in the Church, as the di- 
vinely commissioned means of salvation, impaired 
or shaken. The Catholic Church is not to me either 
a tyrant, a burden, or a prison-house. She is, on 
the contrary, an inspiration and an ideal. The more 
I learn of her the more I realize that she is, indeed, 
" founded upon a Rock." 



THOMAS SPEED MOSBY, 

JEFFERSON CITY, MO. 

Mem. Amer. Inst, of Criminal Law and Criminology; mem. 
Academy of Political Science in the City of New York; 
former Pardon Attorney of the State of Missouri ; author 
of ** Youthful Criminals/' " The Problem of Child Idle- 
ness/' " Capital Punishment/' " Mother of Bad Boys/' 
** Cosmic Factors of Crime/' " The Cause and Cure of 
Crime/' and other essays. 

My adherence to the Church oi Rome has brought 
to me no temporal advantage. Oftener than other- 
wise, it has made me a victim of persecution. But 
what of that? In a spiritual sense my pathway 
" beyond the road to Rome " has been strewn with 
flowers. 

There is no inward joy comparable to that which 
flows from the reception of the Blessed Sacrament 
— contentment, sweet peace, and a living faith that 
keeps the heart aglow. I have long since reached 
the conclusion that true piety is the only enviable 
quality which one may possess in this world. O, 
what a jewel is faith ; what a talisman for the timid, 
the weary and the sick at heart! For every prob- 
lem affecting the deepest mysteries of life, it holds 
the solution. It warms the heart against all the 
chills of a frigid world; it provides inspiration, 

298 



THOMAS SPEED MOSBY 299 

healing and sustenance to all who are fighting the 
good fight ; and it teaches us to grasp victory from 
defeat and to snatch from the grave eternal life. 

It is, I am persuaded, given to but few to know 
the spiritual richness of the Catholic faith; but we 
shall grow in wisdom with the years if we do but 
possess the grace to see the '' Kindly Light " and 
follow where it leads. 

So firmly am I of this belief that in my latest 
book, '' Causes and Cures of Crime," I have taken 
the position that religion is the one universal panacea 
for crime, and have cited numerous incidents from 
the history of the Church as conclusive proof of its 
benign and civilizing attributes. 

I was drawn into the church by my historical 
studies. I am kept there by philosophy, history and 
— faith, the rarest gift and the greatest boon which 
can fall to the lot of mortal man. 



WILLIAM H. McCLELLAN, 

PHILADELPHIA, PA. 

Scholastic of the Society of Jesus at Woodstock, Maryland. 

Great-grandson of Colonel Joseph McClellan, whose 

monument was recently erected at Valley Forge. 

Notwithstanding the reluctance which everyone 
feels in publishing anything concerning his inner 
life, an opportunity of doing so for the consolation 
of other souls makes such action a duty, in recogni- 
tion of which these few lines are written. 

From the time when I first accepted a known por- 
tion of the Catholic Faith in the doctrine of the 
permanence of an apostolic ministry, nineteen years 
of gradual but steady progress elapsed before I 
finally embraced the fullness of the truth as it is in 
Christ. Since that great day I have ever experi- 
enced the increasing goodness of a God whose graces 
and mercies only seem to multiply in proportion to 
the utter unworthiness of their recipient. Rather 
than any marked overflow of sensible joy or en- 
thusiasm. He has been graciously pleased to give 
what I value far more highly, — an increasing sense 
of stability In peaceful convictiofi, a liberty of soul, 
and an impulse to activity in His service, which has 
not only shed a higher light upon the path of life, 

300 



WILLIAM H. McCLELLAN 30 1 

but has come as a new revelation of what it is to 
Hve indeed. This I can say in all deliberation and 
with perfect truth, after nearly five years of life as 
a Catholic, and after three years and a half in the 
Society of Jesus, towards which my confidence and 
affection daily increases. 



MRS. THEOPHILE PAPIN, 

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI. 

The years of my life as a Catholic have, perhaps, 
held nothing worthy of publication; but very far 
have I been from anything like disillusion with re- 
gard to my religion. There has been constantly 
with me the ever present thought oi God's great 
goodness in permitting me to become a member, 
though all unworthy of His great and glorious 
church, and of bringing up my family in the Faith. 
Necessarily I have known a good many converts, 
but of them all a very small number failed to perse- 
vere. Worldliness, indolence, or promiscuous read- 
ing might make them fall away for a time, but I was 
struck by the fact that in the presence of death they 
were only too happy to die in the bosom of the 
Church, a striking illustration oif the saying of Lu- 
ther's mother : " The Protestant church may be a 
good one to live in, but the Catholic is the only one 
to die in." 

I had a very dear friend, received in childhood 
into the fold, whose home life became very unhappy, 
largely on account of the ridicule heaped on her be- 
lief by members of the household, and whose cir- 

302 



MRS. THEOPHILE PAPIN 303 

cumstances rather hindered the practice of her re- 
ligion (she was a highly intellectual woman), and 
who, for distraction and relief from her troubles, 
took to reading Huxley, Darwin, etc., which had the 
effect of weakening the spiritual bonds that held 
her to the Church. But on her death-bed, it was my 
privilege (at her request) to take her a priest, who 
told me that her '' difficulties were but trivial/' I 
could mention another whose life after conversion 
was the farthest from anything spiritual or edify- 
ing, but who nevertheless, when he saw death ap- 
proaching, begged his mother (a Protestant) to 
bring him a priest. Instances of the sort might be 
multiplied. Lapses from faith there often are, but 
Cardinal Newman has declared that between the 
Catholic Church and infidelity there is no true halt- 
ing place, and such seems to be the feeling of those 
who have once known the Truth. 



FELIX ALEXANDER REEVE, 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 

Solicitor of the Treasury; lawyer; colonel of a regiment of 
loyal Tennesseeans in the war for the Union; native of 
Eastern Tennessee, and a Presidential appointee in the 
Department of Justice for more than twenty-five years. 

^ly journey Rome ward and homeward was first 
through ]^Iethodism, the faith of my fathers, and 
then through the high and low grounds of the Epis- 
copal Church, until by tlie guiding hand of Newman 
and other great Catholic writers, and to some ex- 
tent by the feeble light of my own reason, I reached 
the tranquil haven of the infallible Church. 

Since I became a Catholic, in the year of 1873, ^7 
spiritual life has been peaceful and uneventful and 
without disturbing doubts as to the one true church 
established by Christ for the salvation of man in all 
the ages of the world. 

I do not mean to say or imply that my life-jour- 
nev since reachinsf Rome has been whollv unevent- 
ful, for I have experienced many vicissitudes, more 
or less disagreeable, but they have been of a too 
personal or private character to interest the pubHc. 

Cicero says that there is nothing that tires a trav- 
eler so much as a long road that is level except a 
short road that is hilly. 

304 



FELIX ALEXANDER REEVE 305 

Applying this as a simile to my sojourn beyond 
the road to Rome, I can say that my life has been 
neither very hilly nor monotonously level, but for 
the most part agreeably varied. 

My first step in becoming a Catholic was the most 
painful and difficult of all. Such has, I believe, 
been the experience of most converts. To leave the 
church in which we were brought up — the church 
of our parents and brothers and sisters and all of 
our relatives — the church of our most intimate 
friends on earth, and of the dear ones while living, 
who have gone before, and unite with a communion 
so little known in many sections of our country and 
so much misunderstood by non-Catholics every- 
where — is apparently from a temporal standpoint 
a reckless adventure on unpathed waters for un- 
dreamed shores! 

While I have met with some obstacles to my suc- 
cess in this world, yet they have been outweighed 
by the consolations of the Catholic faith. 

If I cannot say with St. Paul, " I have fought a 
good fight," or '^ I have finished my course," I 
trust I can say, with the great Apostle, as I look back 
over forty years, that " I have kept the faith." 



JAMES A. M. RICHEY, 

QUINCY, ILLINOIS. 

Son of the late Canon Richey of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. 
Nashotah, B.D. 1895. Asst. S. Paul's, Beloit, Wis., 1896- 
98. Rector, St. John's (P. E.) Church, Mason City, la., 
1898-99 ; Trinity Church, Janesville, Wis., 1899-1905. San 
Diego, CaHfornia, 1905-09, organized All Saints' parish; 
founder and editor of *^ The Crusader " and " American 
Catholic." Now a candidate for Holy Orders under His 
Grace, Archbishop Glennon. 

The history of Christianity — in conformity with 
the consensus of the Fathers (confirmed by the 
changefulness and conspicuous failure of dissent), 
demonstrates the fact that the Christian Faith is 
safe only in the Catholic Church and the Catholic 
Church is stable only on the Chair of Peter. This 
is the scope or limits of that fundamental ecclesi- 
astical law O'f Christ — " Thou art Peter and upon 
this rock I will build my Church and the gates of 
Hell shall not prevail against it." 

The Divine Saviour established this law; the 
Fathers were agreed concerning it ; every succeeding 
age of history has confirmed it, and Simon's Ship 
Herself — in and out of which the God-Man in- 
structs the multitudes, making Her the Ark of 
Safety and the Home of the Truth — proves it; for 

306 



JAMES A. M. RICHEY 307 

She has sailed through fire and water, neither of 
which could destroy nor quench Her. She has been 
the true Dreadnaught, sailing the boisterous waves 
and turning the darts of the wicked from Her im- 
pregnable armor-plate. 

Demons assailed her, for only that which was Di- 
vine was worthy of their implacable hatred. Men 
fought her because they loved darkness rather than 
light and wished to be rid of the continual reminder 
of Sin, Righteousness and Judgment. Kings and 
nations arose and fell. Reformations, schisms and 
sects proceeded to illustrate confusion worse con- 
founded, and all have made confession oi failure in 
their attempts at a pseudo-unity. 

Through it all, the Bride of Christ — not a na- 
tional church, but One and International — has ever 
had the earth for Her foot-stool while reaching up- 
ward to a constant communion with Heaven. The 
Son of God has delighted daily to visit His Temple 
and have His habitation with the sons of men. 

He Himself, in these days, bears this witness to 
His Church — " If any man will do His Will he 
shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.'* 

Where is the center of world-empire to-day — an 
empire greater than that of ancient Rome in all her 
heathen glory? Where is the throne of Peter — 
the Rock ? Where the Apostolic See ? Where the 
spiritual Shepherd of all peoples and languages? 
Where the international Seer whose very deportment 
proves his Mission in all the world? Where the 



3o8 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

unchanging witness to The Faith? Where the cen- 
ter of Unity? 

Try to answer these questions by thinking of Can- 
terbury, Constantinople or any other place on earth 
than Rome or any person save the Pope — and you 
find it impossible. Thought refuses to think any 
other ; and yet the non-Catholic world stops its ears 
or closes its eyes lest it should hear with its ears and 
see with its eyes and understand with its heart and 
be converted. And this is the witness which Christ 
bears to His Church in the First Century and in the 
Twentieth. It was with some such reflections as 
these that shortly before I became a Catholic I had 
a long interview with my Bishop; an interview 
which, in spite of his kindly intention, left me with 
the feeling that I had lost his friendship. 

That is a thing which must be counted upon as 
part of the cost of becoming a Catholic. One must 
lose friends — many friends to whom he has 
been bound by the close and fraternal ties of a for- 
mer allegiance. It is part of the cost which our 
Blessed Lord Himself prescribed. It would be too 
much to expect that it could be otherwise. The 
good Archbishop to whom I made my submission, 
said, " You will lose friends," lest I should not have 
reckoned the cost. 

The very act of submission is an accusation 
against them. It says — That which you High 
Churchmen delight to believe yourselves — you are 
not. The borrowed light of Catholicity does not 



JAMES A. M. RICHEY 309 

make one a Catholic. The " Catholic Party " be- 
lieves its name until it makes its submission to the 
Catholic Church. 

This is not palatable nor can it be. To them it 
seems the unkindest cut of all that one should leave 
the '' Catholic Party " in the Episcopal church to 
become a real Catholic. Such action is funda- 
mentally necessary if one is to move through the 
shadow to the reality ; yet many abide in the valley 
of the shadow, and friendship is severed as others | 

pass into the reality. It is the thrust of that sword 
which the Divine Redeemer said He came to send ,. 

through the earth. It cuts friendship and pierces ||l 

one's own soul alsoi. New friends are made, and 
quite as true they are, but one cannot forget the 
old. A certain loneliness is assuaged by the con- 
viction that one has done the Will of God, and by 
the comfort of a larger truth, the inspiration of a 
more universal outlook, together with the hope and 
prayer that they also, who are left behind, will be 
guided into the One Fold of the One Shepherd, that 
we may be one in Him. 

The Holy Spirit breatheth where He listeth and 
there is a true Light which enlighteneth every man 
that cometh intO' the world. It would be false to 
this Light, and the facts of experience, to assert 
or allow to be supposed, that one's spiritual experi- 
ences under a former allegiance were not real and 
soul-stirring. One felt at times that God spoke to 
him as really as to the child Samuel, — and yet 



3IO BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

more really, because Samuel supposed that Eli 
called and we knew that it was the voice of God. 
It called, and called again, before we gathered its 
true import. As with Abraham, of old, it led one 
out of his native land to one of promise, and, as 
with Moses and the dwellers in the land of Gessen^ 
it led, from a bondage of four centuries, back to 
that promised land once more. 

About four hundred years ago, the Pharaoh of 
England, Henry VIII, drove out bishops, priests 
and religions who would not submit to his tyranny; 
he confiscated the Church's property, and placed 
under the bondage of his own pseudo-headship, the 
people of God that remained, commanding them to 
make brick without straw. 

Within the last century, a giant among men, 
Cardinal Newman, started his people, through a 
long and toilsome wilderness journey, back to their 
Father-land. It takes some people just about forty 
years to arrive there, as it did the writer. 

One need scarcely apologize for speaking of his 
own experience in such a connection. As one looks 
backward he can aptly illustrate the Divine saying 
— He that loveth father or mother more than Me 
is rfot worthy of Me. It has ever been a strong 
argument with many that " what was good enough 
for my father is good enough for me," never realiz- 
ing that this " logic " would not hold water with 
grandfather or more remote ancestor. Our fathers 
of four centuries ago were Catholics, and were 



JAMES A. M. RICHEY 311 

placed in bondage by an English king who paid 
with toil and husks the prodigal nation which 
strayed from its Father's Fold. Then other fathers 
arose whose fathers had been members of the 
Church of England, but who were themselves, in 
turn, Methodists, as was the case with my grand- 
father, who was head of the Methodist Conference 
in Canada for six terms. He seemed to have the 
wisdom to stand in the way and see; for when my 
father told him of his intention to leave the Meth- 
odists and join the Church of England, he said he 
would place no obstruction in the way as Methodists 
were fast leaving the principles oi Wesley. Thus 
my father started on the return journey. He came 
back a long way, for he was Canon and acting Dean 
of St. Paul's Cathedral, Fond du Lac, for nine 
years; did much to make the Diocese of Fond du 
Lac widely known as the advance guard of the High 
Church movement in this country, and nominated 
Bishop Grafton at the Diocesan Council which was 
to elect a successor to Bishop Brown. Where, 
after years of usefulness and toil, he was compelled 
to cease his pilgrim's progress, there, by the grace 
of God, I was permitted to continue the journey, 
and to experience in a very real sense the cordial 
greeting which awaits returning wanderers who 
reach the true Fold. This experience could be 
duplicated by untold numbers. Incidentally, it 
should illustrate the fact, and this is its chief pur- 
pose here, that the only way to be true to one's 



312 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

father's religion is to follow the guidance of the 
same Holy Spirit Who was leading him homeward 
— until the journey's end. To be true to his 
father's rehgion as he was to his father's, and he 
to his, until the ends meet once more and unite in 
the bond of Divine compact — that the wandering 
child cannot find rest until he arises and returns to 
his Father's House, abjuring his spiritual prodigal- 
ity, and rests in the bosom of his Mother — the 
Church. 

How truly Motherly was Her welcome Home! 
How reassuring the Spirit by which She spake! 
How convincing that Spirit, independent of utter- 
ance, in its refreshing of the inner man! Yes, we 
have had fathers of the flesh, and ecclesiastical 
Agars in bondage with their children, but never any 
spake like these Fathers-in-God nor gave us the sat- 
isfying nourishment of the Mother of us all. 

As one journeys through the days and years, 
after becoming a Catholic, one digests this restored 
relationship more and more. We see the transcend- 
ing greatness — the breadth — of the Catholic 
Church. She draws a line straight down through 
two thousand years and crosses this with Her active 
and personal acquaintance with all nations, which, 
like the after-lights of a ship, illumine the path be- 
hind, adding to Her faith — experience, and to ex- 
perience — patience. It was this fact which caused 
an Episcopal bishop once to say : " The Church of 
Rome is a wise old Mother." 



i 



JAMES A. M. RICHEY 313 

She stretches out Her cruciform arms, like Her 
Divine Saviour, to embrace all — to draw all to 
Herself. She is Universal in Her very character. 
This is so whether we consider in a retrospective 
way Her prevailing conquest throughout history 
over the gates of Hell; or, in a cosmic way, Her 
Universal Mission to all nations as the light of the 
world ; or, in a spirit of introspection, as supplying 
all the spiritual needs of individuals, whether as 
Friend of sinners or Mother oi Saints. 

As Catholics we can personally possess, and per- 
haps convey, the certitude of conviction, where vol- 
umes would scarcely meet the specious arguments 
of diverse controversialists. 

Such religious conviction is not to be had out- 
side the Catholic Church. It is the basis of that 
faith by which we know the Truth and are made 
free. " We know and are sure " that '' Christ is 
God " and '' if a man neglect to hear the Church 
he is to be counted as a heathen or publican.'' In 
other words, with the Apostle, " we know whom we 
have believed." 

For men must and will awake to the absolute 
necessity of Authority. There can be no complete 
nor unwavering faith where there is doubt con- 
cerning the witness to that faith. The Catholic 
Church is the Witness of Christ unto the ends of 
the earth, and to the end of the world. Add to 
this the light which God vouchsafes, and our con- 
science, and we have, no doubt, the measure of lui- 



314 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

man responsibility. It is the office of the Holy 
Spirit to guide into all truth, and doubtless the sin 
against the Holy Ghost is to choose one's resting 
place, stop there and refuse to be led further. St. 
Teresa says : '^ In the conduct of an enterprise that 
conscience counsels or commands, there is only one 
thing to fear — that is fear." 

Only in the steady light of the Catholic Church — 
the pillar of Truth — can one really see the great 
issues of time and eternity and estimate the move- 
ments of times and nations. She holds the keys. 
She acts like Her Lord. She opens and shuts and 
no man can reverse it. She is a persistent Reality 
— a Voice sounding dov^n the ages, a Kingdom, 
standing through them all, for the rise and fall of 
other kingdoms; and whatever She suffers in the 
process by being persecuted among all nations for 
His name's sake. She ever continues, ever prevails, 
ever has an identity which sets her apart, and by 
which she can be identified in any age or nation. 

These are some of the things which we converts 
know are confirmed, ratified and crystallized into the 
certainty of Truth. By close and familiar associa- 
tion with the Bride of Christ — our Mother, She 
disarms prejudice and shows us the verity of those 
things which have drawn us to Her. 



MISS ANNA F. RUTH, 

SOUTH PASADENA, CALIFORNIA. 

It is the duty and privilege of the convert to the 
Church, as he starts on the road beyond, to grow 
in the knowledge of his holy religion; and, as a 
Catholic, it is a special delight to learn daily how 
truly the Bible is a Catholic book. 

One is not teased by its mysterious parts, for 
they are clear to the common mind of the Church. 
The more one studies the subject the more evident 
it grows that the Protestant interpretation w^as an 
after-thought; the true old meaning rests in the 
bosom of the Catholic Church. 

One of the most striking features of one's new 
position is the additional light thrown upon Chris- 
tian doctrines by the seven deutero-canonical books 
which Protestants never quote for proving doctrine, 
and which are found only in their large Bibles. 
Naturally, then, one who has been a Protestant can 
appreciate better the new light cast in many direc- 
tions by Tobias, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus and the 
books of the Maccabees; especially the latter with 
its teaching about prayers for the departed. 

" It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for 
the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins/' 

315 



3l6 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

SO says the second book of the Maccabees. It 
seems therefore nothing strange that Raphael in his 
great painting of the Disputa, in the Camera della 
Segnatura of the Vatican, has placed the renowned 
Hebrew warrior, Judas Maccabeus, next to the Vir- 
gin Mother of God, the chief intercessor of the 
human race. Do not the devotions connected with 
prayers for the dead, and the touching ceremonies 
associated with them, bring the other world very 
near to us? It is not so wholly a foreign country 
— this land that lies beyond the veil that separates 
us from the spirit world. I have often felt this at 
funerals where a Catholic can taste, as it were, the 
certainty and power of the world to come. Never 
does the Catholic faith seem so certain to me as in 
the presence of death. 

Thus, more and more one appreciates the ad- 
vantages of possessing a complete Bible. I would 
like to have a compendium in popular form of the 
important light thrown on Christian revelation, as 
taught by the Church, by these books of the old 
Law. It is this witness of the Bible, and the har- 
mony of all Catholic doctrine which has impressed 
me the most since I became a Catholic. The con- 
ditions for salvation are clearly defined. Yet the 
Church is far more liberal than the average Prot- 
estant creeds with their hard, narrow dogmatism; 
their " Word of God " is mostly the word of man, 
whereas the Catholic interpretation is that the Word 
of God was given by the Spirit of God, and the 



MISS ANNA F. RUTH 317 

Church alone can teach what that divinely revealed 
Word is. 

In toleration and charity for those not of our 
Faith the average Catholic shows more virtue than 
the average Protestant; I have known Catholics 
and Protestants of many nationalities, and have 
proved the truth of this assertion, which some may 
be inclined to deny. Since I entered on the *^ road 
beyond '' I have travelled in many lands, and one of 
the things that has strengthened and grounded my 
faith has been the miracles of the Church, past and 
present. I have seen with wonder, and at close 
range, the Liquefaction of the blood of St. Jan- 
uarius. I have deeply studied the marvellous cures 
at Lourdes. What is called superstition in Cath- 
olics is often only an evidence of their deeper and 
wider faith; they have experienced so' many more 
than natural things that they find it hard to set a 
fixed boundary to what may be. They are sur- 
rounded by the supernatural in which there moves, 
not one Saint, but all the Saints of all the Christian 
centuries. 

But preeminently, there is one thing, especially, 
that roots and grounds our faith as we journey be- 
yond the road to Rome, and that is the doctrine of 
the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass — the Real Pres- 
ence; and after that — Confession. That perpet- 
ual indwelling of Christ in His Church, W'ho can 
describe it ? The door of the Church always open ; 
the red light of the sanctuary lamp guiding our 



3l8 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

footsteps to the Friend in the Tabernacle — He 
who sits above the Mercy Seat, and is Himself the 
fountain of all mercy! 

Or take Confession. Is there any greater con- 
solation for the soul than to have a true friend for 
a counsellor? How different confession looks 
zcithin the Church from what it looked without. 
When one has gone to confession in different coun- 
tries, and in different languages, one realizes afresh 
the divine power of this Sacrament; it is like the 
kindness of the Good Shepherd, and one of its fea- 
tures is the bond of Christian intercession which it 
strengthens. '' Say a prayer for me,'' says the 
Confessor. '' Pray for me,'' says the Penitent. 

Two things that impressed themselves on me 
after my reception into the Church have to do with 
confession. I had been taught the doctrine of grace 
habitual and actual; sacramental grace; the graces 
of Faith, Hope and Charity, and the necessity of 
gaining the grace of Final Perseverance. All this 
as a systematized doctrine was new to me. I knew 
of grace as the help of God, but until I became a 
Catholic I did not know what was meant by sancti- 
fying grace. This and the distinction between 
mortal and venial sins solved several mysteries for 
me. It showed the absolute need of a second sacra- 
ment for the forgiveness of sins after baptism, since 
we could lose the sanctifying grace of the first sac- 
rament, and it also showed what was meant by this 
forgiveness of sins — a subject not explained in 



MISS ANNA F. RUTH 319 

the Prayer-book Catechism. My dear father, a 
clergyman of the Episcopal Church, was an old- 
fashioned High Churchman, caring little for ritual. 
One of his teachings was the obligation of belong- 
ing to the Visible Church, and he was very strong 
on the point that there could be but one Catholic 
Church in a country. Both before and after my 
conversion this question of jurisdiction claimed my 
close attention, and as a Catholic it all became very 
clear and simple to me. Living among the Span- 
ish people and their descendants, of California, 
made me realize the absurdity of intruding a later 
religion on that established by the Friars. These 
people had not the slightest doubts as to- which was 
the rightful church, and their stand was perfectly 
logical. The Episcopalians, according to my 
father's theory, were the schismatics, condemned 
by his own principles; for they had intruded on a 
diocese organized before the Americans took pos- 
session of California. I was quite satisfied that this 
cut the knot, and proved that the branch theory of 
the Church was not true. 

I will relate one other incident that happened to 
me in Rome two years ago. It was the Vigil of 
Pentecost at St. John Lateran. We had followed 
the procession to the Baptistery of Constantine. 
We had seen the blessing of the water and had re- 
turned in procession outside the Basilica to the 
front portals and up to the High Altar. Solemn 
High Mass followed. It was the most impressive 



320 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

ceremony I had seen in Rome. Beside me stood 
two American ladies who made some slighting re- 
mark about what they did not understand. I saw 
it was ignorance, not malice, and accosting them I 
ventured to explain the ceremonies as they oc- 
curred. There are few seats in these Roman 
churches — the congregation is truly circumstantes, 
" standing about,'' near the altar rails. When the 
Gospel was being read they were much impressed 
by the reverence shown the Sacred Volume. " Oh, 
I see," said one lady, " reverence is the reason Cath- 
olics are not allowed to read the Scriptures." This 
gave me a chance to correct her mistake and say I 
had just heard an Italian preacher urge his congre- 
gation to read the Gospels, especially on Sunday. 
The ladies continued to follow the Mass with close 
attention and at the end they said, '' We thank you 
for explaining what we have often watched before 
in utter ignorance — for no one has ever before told 
us what it meant." 

Incidents of a like nature occurred miany times 
on my travels, impressing me profoundly with the 
fact that once on the road beyond, we should make 
it our duty, when the opportunity offers itself easily 
and naturally, to explain to others as much of our 
religion and its customs and ceremonies as we can. 
These ladies I met in Rome, women apparently of 
refinement and education, did not even know that 
the Gloria in Excelsis was an old Christian hymn. 

Thus it is that our Catholic Faith, as simple to 



MISS ANNA F. RUTH 32 1 

US as the proposition that two and two make four 
— growing clearer and more marvellous the further 
we journey beyond the road to Rome — remains 
such a sealed book to the average non-Catholic. 
We can but practice unwearied love, unwearied pa- 
tience, in explaining it; giving our reasons for 
being satisfied, our joy because oi the hope that is 
in us. The opportunity may only come in little 
things by the wayside; but who can tell but that 
some day that seed may bear fruit a hundred fold ? 



CARL L. SANDIN, 

WESTCHESTER, NEW YORK CITY. 

Instructor at St. Joseph's Institute for Deaf Boys, Westchester. 

The ways of the Lord are mysterious, profound 
wisdom and goodness. Foolish is he who at- 
tributes to chance whatever he sees happen in the 
long chain of events which occurs in life and in the 
world. God alone can be, and is, the regulator of 
these things, directing all with strength and sweet- 
ness to His greater glory, no less than to the im- 
mortal and only good of man. 

I was born in the city of L., in Sweden; a 
cathedral city having a beautiful, historical Xlllth 
century cathedral, a palace for the bishop, a castle 
for the residing governor of the province, and a col- 
lege with about a thousand students. The faith of 
our fathers, as every schoolboy in all Scandinavia 
knows, had once been Catholic and Catholic only. 
Since Martin Luther's days we have been Lutheran, 
or nothing. Catholicism was banished and con- 
sidered as dead; had been so for centuries. But 
the venerable Lutheran Bishop of L., being my 
father's personal friend, the grace of God fell upon 
me, much against my own will, for at the age o-f six- 

322 



CARL L. SANDIN -t,2^ 

teen I received private instruction for oonfirmation 
and communion from the Bishop of L. himself. 

*' The wind bloweth v^here it Hsteth, and thou 
hearest the sound thereof, but cannot tell where it 
Cometh and whither it goeth : so is everyone that is 
born of the spirit." ^ 

Once a week, for a whole year, I together with 
another young man, now high officer in the Royal 
Swedish army, and ten young society girls, all about 
the same age, assembled in the Bishop's palace 
around the table in his study. But outside the pal- 
ace windows was the beautiful old cathedral where 
the Supernatural Presence of God with His Cruci- 
fied and Risen Love was no more. Thither my 
thoughts often went, wondering what it all meant? 
And with the great saint of Sweden, St. Bridget, 
m.y soul cried: '^ Amor mens crucifixus est'' (my 
love is crucified). 

I learned to love, most dearly, our beloved 
teacher, the Bishop, for he taught me how love 
conquers all things. ^^Love is life," he said, "but 
hatred is death. Not your father, nor your mother 
loved you as God has loved you, for it was in order 
that you might be happy that He gave His Only 
Son for you. When He bowed down His head in 
the death hour, love solemnized its triumph. Love 
is atonement, and depths of love are atonement's 
depth. The Prince of Atonement descended from 
Heaven to imprisoned spirits that waited for the 

ijohn iii.8. 



324 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

Deliverer. Transfigured He thence reascended. 
But not from your heart likewise did he ascend, for 
there He still lives in the spirit, loves and atones 
evermore/' 

So I was confirmed and received Communion, 
finding therein that my heart had to be the only 
Tabernacle and the Holy Bible my only rule and 
guide. The Bishop seemed to hesitate when he 
wrote with his own dear hand these words on the 
fly-leaf of my Bible, words which later seemed to me 
almost like a prophecy: "Whosoever therefore 
shall confess me before men, him will I confess 
also before my Father which is in heaven." ^ 

Here my '' Via Dolorosa " began, but not before 
my parents were dead, when I, at the age of 2y, 
left Sweden and began my road towards Rome, as 
a candidate for Holy Orders in the General Theo- 
logical Seminary of New York City. 

I came in quest of something lost in the Prot- 
estant Church ; doubting I asked wath St. Thomas : 
" Lord, where is the Way ? " I sought the Living 
Christ, the Heart of God; for with Dante I be- 
lieved that " God's will is our peace." St. Paul, 
the first convert, testified, when the Supernatural 
love was revealed to him and called him, on the 
road to Damascus, that he was '' crucified with 
Christ," 2 " Risen with Christ," ^ '' Hid with Christ 
in God." ^ And he also says: '' If I speak with 

1 Matthew yi.Z2, ^ Gal. ii.20. ^ Col. iii.i. ^ Col. iii.3. 



CARL L. SANDIN 325 

the tongues of men and of angels and have not 
charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tin- 
kHng cymbal/' ^ 

This is harmony. This is confession of Christ. 
This is Catholicism. But, alas! I was still a Prot- 
estant. Nevertheless, when love called me I pressed 
onward; for had I not once been confirmed, as the 
good Lutheran Bishop said, into depths of love and 
atonement's depths? Love called me from New 
York even to Rome, Italy, giving me there all the 
desire of my heart, all that was beautiful, all the 
love which the world rarely gives. Yet my soul 
was still in atonement, for I realized how Our Lord 
stood a beggar at my door, asking me : '^ Am I 
not as good as My gift? '' I could not answer un- 
til suddenly the light of the supreme command of 
Grace was shed on my soul : " Whosoever will 
save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose 
his life for My sake shall find it." ^ '' For 
greater love hath no man than this: that a 
man lay down his life for his friends." ^ So I 
went in quest of the road whereon to lose my life 
for my friend — for the Friend. " For what doth 
it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
his own soul? Or what shall a man give in ex- 
change for his soul?" This is the Christian's 
choice : God or nothing. 

I am asked to give a testimony, interesting and 
^ I Cor. xiii.i. 2 Matthew xvi.25. ^ St. John xv.13. 



326 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

convincing to Catholics and non-Catholics, as to 
why I am a Catholic. Shall it be the testimony of 
a season I spent in Rome, the Eternal City, beneath 
sunny Italian skies, a Christmas night spent in the 
Colisseum and on the Steps of the Ara Coeli — 
memories most dear to my heart — or shall it be 
the remembrance of a Christmas quite different that 
I spent at the North Pole, in the eternal ice and 
snow. Assuredly the one at the North Pole, where 
I lost my hearing and found my soul, even as St. 
Paul on the Damascus road found his soul when 
he was stricken with blindness. *^ The Heavens 
declare the glory of God, and the firmament show- 
eth the works of His hands/' ^ There, in the far 
North, the glory of God made clear to me His 
words : '' He that loseth his life for my sake shall 
find it." 

'' If I take the wings of the morning and go to 
the uttermost part of the sea, Thou art there,'' 
sings King David. Some of us, who went, were 
given the grace to hear His Voice and see His 
V\^onders in the silence reigning supreme at the top 
of the earth. 

I ma}^ be asked what practical benefit the world 
derives from the attainment of the poles? To this 
I can only answer that we should consider anything 
that tends to inspire men, or becomes an incentive 
toward higher things, as a practical benefit to hu- 
manity. WhdX lies beyond the mysteries of the 

^ Ps. xviii.i. 



CARL L. SANDIN 327 

poles? Figuratively I answer: What lies beyond 
the conversion of a Protestant and persecuting mind 
to Supernatural love, to God's mystery O'f Grace in 
the Catholic Church. Can the Sacred Heart of 
the Creator, the source of Divine Love, come 
down upon earth for the conversion of souls to 
God? 

It was midsummer and midnight. The mid- 
night sun was shining brightly and a giant American 
steamer full of tourists was at anchor in the fjord 
at North Cape, the uttermost part of Norway. 
They were there to see the midnight sun. 

Splendidly they had entertained us on that mag- 
nificent steamer ; at last we have said farewell to 
our kind hosts and hostesses, the flags are waving 
and the ship's cannon booming! Good-by! Fare- 
well to civilization! Our own ship, loaded with 
provisions and equipments, is now steaming out 
toward the unknown. Shall we ever return? 
Shall we be able to accomplish our task ? Shall we 
solve the problem? For weeks and weeks we sail 
through the Arctic Ocean. At first the sun shines 
night and day. Rapidly it declines more and more. 
Soon there will be only night: we must hurry on, 
ever northward, that we may go into winter quar- 
ters somewhere, at some rock or land, before the 
darkness overwhelms us. But nothing is to be 
seen but surging water and floating ice. The dogs 
begin to be uneasy, we have some four hundred of 
them, strong, handsome, Siberian dogs trained for 



328 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

sleighing. Their instinct tells them that the long 
winter night is upon us. Already we are caught in 
the ice-floes and at last the ship is frozen solid in 
the ice. Here we must settle down for the winter; 
snow huts are built for the dogs, while we live in 
the ship, which furious blizzards already have half 
buried in the snow. There is no immediate danger 
although death lurks everywhere. Unless the ice 
is broken up by the treacherous undercurrents and 
the huge icebergs crush us, we are safe, at least, 
until the sun returns next year. The long night 
has set in, it will last for many, many months. It 
turns bitter cold, 50 degrees below zero, with rag- 
ing blizzards, while in the body of the buried ship 
we sit silent in the glimmer of the greasy, smoking 
blubber-lamps. How w^eary and long and lonely is 
the night ! Truly we are the men " sitting in dark- 
ness." But behold, the stars, the eternal, wonderful 
stars, how radiant they are in the dark night, how 
beautifully they look down upon us, telling us that 
we are not forsaken. 

And what glorious light is this suddenly sur- 
rounding us and then vanishing as suddenly as it 
came? Is the firmament on fire? Ah! it is the 
all-enchanting Aurora Borealis: the whole horizon 
is ablaze with shining colors, long streamers of 
green, crimson and golden light playing together. 
The Eskimoes on Greenland believe it is the spirits 
of their dead playing. Suddenly the light dies out, 
the next moment to return again, and we stand for 



CARL L. SANDIN 329 

hours wrapped up in our heavy furs gazing and 
gazing upon the wonder. 

Other nights the calm, sweet moon is silvering 
the barren wastes of snow, shining over the green- 
ish-glittering ice. A huge, white polar bear comes 
playing in the stillness Vv^ith her little cubs. It 
seems almost a sacrilege to shoot them. But we 
must secure food for ourselves and the dogs; for 
on them our sleigh journey toward the pole depends. 
In the moonlight and silence we must go* hunting, 
finding sometimes a walrus, huge as an elephant, 
rising to breathe where the hidden gulf stream 
keeps open water, or some seals, polar bears and 
foxes. We must eat, too, of the game we can 
catch to save us from scurvy — and later on from 
starvation. 

A time comes when there are no stars, no Aurora, 
no moonlight, only darkness; darkness and chaos 
as it must have been on the First Day of Creation. 
Despair almost overwhelms us. Will the sun never 
return? Shall we never be set free from our 
prison? Then like a miracle, like a prayer an- 
swered, the star of Venus appears in the dark sky. 
She comes alone, luminous, radiant, and the dark- 
ness gives way for the blue circle of light surround- 
ing her loveliness, reminding one at once of the 
Madonna in her blue mantle. She conies, a herald 
of the advancing sun, and we begin to hope again 
and count the days of deliverance. A soft light 
soon appears at the horizon at noon, separating 



330 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

night from day. Every day it grows brighter. 
Shall we be disappointed? Nay, nay! At last 
there is a golden ray, a glimmer toward the East. 
The next day at noon we are standing watching, 
waiting. There it is again, it grows higher, higher. 
The whole orb of the sun rises and we fall on our 
knees, mute and almost blinded in the splendor of 
this glory of God. 

Xow the sun shines night and day again over the 
frozen desert. There is no waniith in its rays, only 
light. 

\Yt must hurry now, leave the ship, and with 
loaded sleighs and dogs start onward over the ice- 
hummocks toward our aim — the pole. Ah ! what 
hardships, what difficulties, what sufferings; snow 
blinded, frozen, deaf, starving. Then appear open 
channels of water impossible to cross, and soon the 
whole Arctic Sea only a mass of surging ice-floes; 
we drift around on the floes, men, dogs, seals and 
walruses and a million sea-birds, to — we know not 
where. Did we reach the pole ? \A'e do not know. 
Perhaps we drifted across it! Struggling back, 
at length we managed to reach safety. 

Wt had to retreat, and return defeated to Amer- 
ica, for which we had wished to- win glory and 
fame. But to me it was not, and never can be, 
a mere Polar trip; it was something else besides. 
Do you ask what else? Listen to the words of Job 
and you shall know. " I have heard of Thee by 
the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth 



CARL L. SANDIN 33 1 

Thee." In the depths of trouble, sorrow and suf- 
fering in the frozen North, I too had seen His 
Face. 

Returning to civiHzation, I sought entrance to a 
monastery — a Protestant Episcopal monastery — 
only to find that I yet possessed but half the truth. 
I will not linger over the details, but the time came 
when my decision was made, and I stepped over the 
wall; I crossed my Jordan and entered my heart's 
promised land. There in a Franciscan Catholic 
monastery, opposite West Point Military Academy, 
I was immediately received into the Catholic 
Church, for had I not been a Catholic in my heart 
always? And now my work of love for God is 
the wondrous work among Christ's silent children, 
where hundreds of deaf ears are made, as it were, 
to hear, and lips are made to speak. 'Ad Major em 
Dei Gloriam; this is the work I found beyond the 
road to Rome. It is very personal and private 
and precious, and therefore I would prefer to say 
with St. Paul: " I am hidden with Christ in God." 
My work '' beyond " means Divine love found on 
earth in the Sacred Heart; it means the lost coin 
found ; it means the sheep brought back to the fold ; 
the prodigal son returning home ; it is the precious 
pearl I bought and for which I sold all I had; it is 
the Kingdom of Heaven; the Bride who seeks her 
spouse — Christ. How should it be otherwise ? 
This love for Him, who loved us unto death should 
show itself by outward acts. Who can comprehend 



332 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

this love and delight? My answer is: Go and 
make a trial of it. It is to be found in the Catholic 
Church on earth, and in the Catholic Church only. 
It is love triumphant in God. It is the Heart of 
God, the heart of the Universe throbbing with ever- 
lasting love; it is the eternal union of the finite and 
the infinite, these two wills in accord ; it is the con- 
queror of death which is disunion and disintegra- 
tion; it is the destruction of hate; it is God and His 
creature supreme, triumphant — " My beloved to 
me and I to him." No longer does my spirit doubt 
or ask, " Lord, where is the way ? " All I won, 
all I found, I found in Him who is the Way, the 
Truth and the Life. Like the Spouse in the Canti- 
cle I exclaim, " I have found Him whom my soul 
loveth, I hold Him and will not let Him go." 



If: 



avs 



y't^I 



-. >-- — a-, r . 



iV liic on 

: 3 do SO, 



334 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

a man is asked to pay for what he receives from 
heaven — for *' unto- whomsoever much is given, 
of him much shall be required/' i\nd he often pays 
with his heart's blood. 

For the convert has to turn away from many old 
and dear friends, partly through change of environ- 
ment and partly because they sometimes turn away 
from him. He may have to pull up his stakes and 
wander hither and yon before he can find a place to 
set the sole of his foot and rest his head. Mean- 
w^hile he is conscious that he has given pain to those 
he loves, and that even they may, while many others 
surely will misjudge him personally, and that not 
one of them can really know the state of his mind 
or understand his religion. He knows that he is 
right in the step he has taken, and that the Catholic 
religion is true, for God has spoken as He never 
spoke before and doubt has given place to a cer- 
tainty that is incontrovertible. But who that has 
never travelled this path and found the truth, can 
understand the clear illumination of mind and peace 
of soul that God gives to one who has long w^andered 
beyond the confines of the Catholic Church and now 
is sheltered securely within her walls? 

And there are readjustments, not easy to make, 
not always easy to determine. Where shall he go? 
What shall he do? Will those who have been 
trained from infancy in another system of religion 
than his — can they understand his ideals ? Are 
those ideals the outgrowth of a Puritanism that 



REV. HENRY R. SARGENT 335 

has certainly influenced all forms of Christianity 
outside the Catholic Church, or are they to be cher- 
ished because they are Catholic, while they may 
appear extravagant or impossible to his present as- 
sociates? These new friends. Catholic-born, are 
they narrow and unsympathetic at times, or are 
they absolutely right and is it the convert who must 
somehow do everything to adjust his ideas to that 
absolute standard? And, on the other hand, while 
other ideals appear to contradict the ethical stan- 
dards of that Puritanism that modern systems of 
Christianity have never quite been able to slough off, 
can they be surrendered for that reason without 
the sacrifice of a liberty wherewith Christ hath made 
men free? 

Very likely both sides are at fault. Human na- 
ture being what it is, one cannot expect that faith 
and sacraments will always perfect character. Give 
God a fair chance and He will do something; He 
will make a soul love and desire goodness. Give 
Him entire freedom in a soul and He can make a 
Saint. But, alas! most o^f us must content our- 
selves with a little goodness and thank our stars 
if we get to heaven in the end. And so, as the con- 
vert once found some people kind and generous, 
some small and exacting, thus it will be now. 
Speaking for myself, I am free tO' say that I have 
found both sorts in the Catholic Church ; but, while 
I do not expect everybody to believe this statement, 
I will say that I have found more little narrow peo- 



336 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

pie in the communion I left than I have found in 
the Cathohc Church, and that ordinarily Catholics 
are not a fault-finding people. Some would say 
that this opinion is, of itself, a proof of Roman 
Catholic bigotry: I think, on the contrary, that it 
is the result of the fact which I have indicated, the 
persistence of a Calvinistic temper in Protestantism, 
and the absence of fixed standards of doctrine and 
of an authority that is real, not theoretical. 
\Mi ether or no, I will testify herewith that I have 
experienced amongst Catholic Clergy and laity, 
much kindness and many instances of generosity 
and forbearance. In the presence of many difficul- 
ties consequent upon my conversion, good friends 
stood by me and cheered my way. The Archbishop 
under whom I began my studies received me with 
consideration and kindness, gave me unexpected 
freedom in the Seminary course, and ordained me 
to the priesthood at the end of ten months. And of 
the loving and patient friends I found in the Fac- 
ulty, the Fathers of the Society of St. Sulpice and 
their colleagues, I can never think or speak of them 
except with a mingled feeling of reverence and af- 
fection. 

So much, it is fitting, should be replied to that 
oft-repeated inquiry. Are you happy? If one might 
bare his soul to the world and if he were able to 
put into words the experiences and sensations that 
have found lodgment within, he could write of a 
joy that is unfailing, of a faith that rests upon un- 



REV. HENRY R. SARGENT 337 

changing truth, of a calm that is so deep and fixed, 
so altogether unruffled by exterior events that these 
seem but the trifles of life. He could testify that 
never a single doubt has crossed his mind to disturb 
this interior peace; that once the step had been 
taken in obedience to the guidance of the Holy 
Ghost, that good Friend forever closed up every 
avenue of return. And so it will always be when 
the convert keeps faith with Him. 

It may sound hard and ungracious to the ears of 
friends he has left behind if the sometime Angli- 
can speaks of the gradual disappearance from his 
memory of his former religion and its concerns. 
Monsignor Benson, in his Confessions of a Con- 
vert, writes of the " rapidly fading impression of 
Anglicanism upon his memory and the continually 
deepening experiences of the Catholic religion." 
Supply any other word you wish for that one, 
^' rapidly," and the phrase will ordinarily suit the 
circumstances in the life of every convert. He 
may not cease to love his old associates or forget 
many pleasant associations — I believe that with 
most converts affection deepens rather than dimin- 
ishes, and I should almost suspect the goodness of 
heart of one who remembered only to condemn — 
but as it was with Newman so it has been with 
those who followed him, " I went by and lo she 
was gone, I sought her but her place could nowhere 
be found.'^ 

And upon the ruins of the past rises before the 



338 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

eyes of the newcomer a wonderful edifice, a church 
that is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, a church 
that is world-wide in extent, in sympathy, in capaci- 
ties of adaptation to races and peoples and eras, 
and age-long in her venerable history, a church that 
from her very width and greatness must have all 
sorts of children and therefore, by the principle of 
contrasts, must seem now" wonderful in sanctity, 
now incongruously worldly. But gradually, as he 
lives in her communion and is absorbed into her 
life, differences become balanced and the vision as- 
sumes a right perspective. The convert is no lon- 
ger looking with dimmed eyes, seeing men " as it 
were trees walking,'' for the gift of faith and the 
illumination of the indwelling Spirit, unhindered 
now" by ignorance or obstinacy, make clear what 
once was so dark. 

People who are not Catholics will not believe, or 
will question the assertion, that until one has crossed 
the hne that separates the false or the imperfect 
from the true, a man cannot understand the Faith 
of the Catholic Church or her principles of action. 
She seems to them to be temporizing when she is 
acting in the patience of God, hard when she is 
jealous for His honor, imposing obser^^ances when 
she is permitting souls to liberate their piety in 
various forms of devotion, disproportioned in what 
she herself puts into practice when her own children 
are taught from infancy that neither Saint nor any 
other creature can come between the soul and its 



REV. HENRY R. SARGENT 339 

Creator to deprive Him of the first and highest 
place in the spiritual life. They talk of her ex- 
actions in faith when she demands a very little as de 
fide, in morals when much in this sphere is of coun- 
sel only. They stand outside the portals of the 
Church, look in at what to them is a beclouded at- 
mosphere, and pass an ill-formed judgment upon 
things that are so mysterious that they appear fan- 
tastic. 

All this the convert sees. At first he w^ould fain 
discuss and explain. But he might better wait and 
spare himself, for when he has waited and possessed 
his soul in patience he will reach the conclusion that 
only a new birth in the Kingdom of Heaven on 
earth can give a man the sanity of judgment and 
clearness of vision to comprehend the solid realities 
of that divine society we call the Catholic Church. 
And then he wall turn to God in prayer; he will go 
to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Most Holy 
Sacrament and place in its unfathomed depths these 
souls that, if dear to him, are unspeakably precious 
to the Saviour of the World. He will never lose 
an opportunity to lead an inquiring brother to the 
light of Faith — though for this he wall be severely 
judged by those who resent his act and discredit his 
motive — but he will render better service to his 
friend and leave the area of divine operation less 
impeded if he lives his Hfe as a consistent Catholic 
and trusts more to prayer than to words. 

To the convert who has passed the earlier stages, 



340 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

in which much will often seem strange and con- 
fused, there comes this further experience, the wit- 
ness on the part of his brethren in religion of an un- 
wavering conviction that the Catholic Church is 
unique and exclusive. They do not commonly dis- 
cuss this conviction in their own minds, and even 
when controversy is forced upon them they may 
not always formulate the idea. For it is a part of 
themselves, not as a mere intellectual tradition that 
lingers on and influences thought spasmodically, 
but as a spring of both thought and action. The 
CathoHc, unless he gives up or denies his religion, 
can never be anything but Catholic in his point of 
view or determine a line of conduct except upon 
the principles of Catholic theology. He may act 
inconsistently with those principles, but still they 
serve in some fashion as a deterrent, w^hether to 
arrest a step contemplated or to induce him to ac- 
knowledge and repent of his fault. He believes 
what the Catechism has taught him, not self-con- 
sciously but spontaneously, and he measures right 
and wrong by the simple moral theology of the con- 
fessional, wath neither introspectiveness nor cap- 
tiousness. Unless or until he has observed at close 
range the working of non-Catholic religions, he has 
only the most vague and indistinct notions of what 
their disciples believe; and why they should so dif- 
fer from him or differ at all from anything so 
transparently true as the Catholic religion, is an 
odd thing to his philosophy. He is commonly dis- 



REV. HENRY R. SARGENT 341 

posed, though he is often thought to be the oppo- 
site, to be charitable towards Protestantism and to 
think that Protestants are acting in good faith. 
But they and their systems are a puzzle to him, and 
unless he is an amateur theologian or — that un- 
desirable person — a proselytizer, he is much more 
inclined to leave them alone than meddle with their 
views. But of one thing he is certain, that God 
has revealed Himself unerringly to man, that He 
has set upon earth a Church that is indefectible, in 
which the Holy Spirit dwells uniquely, and which 
is possessed of an authority and of forces that are 
wholly divine in their origin and are divinely di- 
rected in their operation. 

This is a wonderful thing to the convert when he 
realizes it — as it is, indeed, a wonderful thing to 
the whole world. Once in the Catholic Church, 
not only does a man understand, as he never before 
understood, her spirit and genius; he also sees that 
anything else that looks like this Church, but lacks 
one or another feature of resemblance, is quite an- 
other thing. High Church Anglicanism is to him 
no longer " Catholic not Roman," or " a Catholic 
Church without the Pope" — it is an entirely dif- 
ferent religion. Say what you like of its broad 
culture, and gentle people, and aesthetic habits, it 
is not the Catholic Church and has no part or lot 
in her inheritance. The Church that is Roman is 
the Church that is founded upon a rock, and has 
proved to the world her competency to stand out 



342 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

against all the storms of the centuries by the fact 
that she has done so. The world may distrust, or 
dislike, or fear the Catholic Church, and this is as 
our Lord said it would be, but her extraordinary 
vitality, her wonderful powers of recuperation, 
the faith, the loyalty, the obedience of her children 
have long ago compelled the amazement, if they 
have not always evoked the praise of the people of 
every age since the Day of Pentecost. And '' the 
world judges securely.'' This, I say, is a remark- 
able thing to the convert, and gives him fortitude 
amidst the trials that his conversion may have 
brought into his life. 

Again, I note that constant sense of the presence 
and the movement of supernatural grace in the 
Catholic Church. It is impossible to describe it, 
impossible to convince many that it is at all differ- 
ent or higher in quality than the workings of the 
Holy Ghost in other spheres. But it is different, 
more steady in its flow, more distinguishing in its 
qualities, more pervasive in its influences. Others 
of other religions have been good and holy; who 
could or would deny that? God works outside the 
Catholic Church and deals both justly and gener- 
ously with those who are in good faith. If they 
think they are receiving grace through sacraments, 
they may receive it at the ver}^ time they so look 
for it, but not in the way they think. If they obey 
God and keep His commandments, and want to be, 
and try to be saints, let us not limit the operations 



REV. HENRY R. SARGENT 343 

of the Most High. We give these people credit for 
all they are and all they do-. But, nevertheless, in 
the Church that God has constituted amongst men, 
and by her sacraments in a way that surpasses all 
others, we expect and believe that He does won- 
derful things such as are done nowhere else. Si 
quaeris monumentum, circumspice. If you ask for 
proof of this, look abroad and look back; see the 
Saints of the Catholic Church, her Religious Or- 
ders, contemplative, active, expiatory, missionary; 
her altars with their multitudes of daily communi- 
cants, her devotion to our divine Lord in the 
Blessed Sacrament, the sacrifices of her poor chil- 
dren, the generosity of her rich, the perseverance 
in grace of Catholic people — a thing unparalleled 
in other religions. And judge her, not by those 
sins and failures in human life that are common to 
the race, but by those triumphs of the Holy Ghost 
in the souls of her children that have been equalled 
nowhere else. 

As I close this paper I will speak of one criticism 
that is sometimes made upon the career of the con- 
vert after he has become settled in the Catholic 
Church. It has been said of one or another that 
he has turned from a life of activity and service- 
ableness to one of obscurity, where his gifts, small 
or great, are little employed. Well, this may be 
true. One can readily understand that somebody 
might have been very useful in, say, the High 
Church Movement and now be of little use as a 



344 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

Catholic. Whatever talent he possesses the Church 
is likely to employ in some way, but it may be she 
has no urgent need for that talent or that she sub- 
ordinates it to something more .desirable — just as 
a priest, suddenly realizing his vocation to a Re- 
ligious Order, may be required by his Bishop to re- 
main for a time in a work where the need is im- 
mediate and imperative. Moreover, we must not 
forget that the range of action has become, not 
necessarily limited but altered. Conditions are 
changed, and so may the activities be changed; 
they may become more interior, less pronounced. 
Emphasis was laid once upon this or that line of 
work; now the demand may be supplied already, 
and the man be called to fulfill a different service. 
It is strange how persons outside the Church who 
have often been heard to express their admiration 
for her wisdom in making use of everything that 
comes to her hand, will in other circumstances find 
fault with her for her unwisdom in neglecting op- 
portunities. 

But it may, nevertheless, be added that the rea- 
sons for conversion are not economic. A man does 
not become a Catholic because he thinks the Church 
needs him, but in obedience to a divine call, and in 
order that he may assure himself of grace and sal- 
vation. The shock, especially in middle life, is 
sometimes too great to allow continuance in a course 
that was entered upon in earlier days. Some- 
times it hinders for a period, sometimes it arrests 



REV. HENRY R. SARGENT 345 

altogether the spontaneity and alertness with which 
one began, and the life seems or may be, in fact, 
inert. It need not be so, but it may be. Yet what 
is that to the convert, to Almighty God Himself? 
Have not some men glorified Him by suffering 
rather than by action, '' in the fires " rather than by 
walking here " in green pastures " ? Intellectual 
failure is not moral failure and the Cross is greater 
than a laurel-wreath. Nor are spiritual results 
measured by apparent accomplishments — men can 
be living to God when they are said to be dead and 
buried. 

I do not pretend to suppose that this testimony 
of one who has passed beyond the Road to Rome 
will be of any extraordinary value to those who 
dwell without that City of the People of God. 
There are, indeed, some minds that will ever be 
possessed of what seems an incapacity to see her 
beauty and understand her heavenly wisdom. 
There are those, I know well, who are invincibly 
ignorant of the greatness of the Catholic Church; 
to those she is only great at all in her narrowness 
and willful exclusiveness, for she loves to shut out 
and condemn. There are others who look upon her 
with wonder yet are afraid to come near and hear 
what she has to say to them. There are yet others 
who cherish in their hearts bitterness and strife; 
they cling to what they have championed and hope 
to sustain their claims by false accusations. And 
there are numberless souls who are weary with the 



346 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

strife of tongues and long for a place of rest — 
and '' now they desire a better, that is to say, a 
heavenly countr>\'' And for such, who hunger and 
thirst, these words have been written. 








MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL, 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 

Author oi A Virginia Cavalier; The House of Egremont ; 

The Fortunes of Fiii; The Sprightly Romance of 

Marsac, etc. 

I became a Catholic by inverse methods, as most 
converts do; that is to say, my reason became con- 
vinced and faith followed. The same reasons, 
v^hich made me adopt the Catholic religion, keep 
me in the Church. Incidentally it has given me 
great peace of mind ; I could not say any more than 
this in ten pages. 



347 



THE VERY REVEREND JOHN SPENSLEY, 

D.D., Ph.D., 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 

President of Gibbons Hall, a Lay Department of the Catholic 
Universit}^ of America. 

Did I ever regret having taken the road to Rome? 
Never! Having found the True Faith, there has 
been no desire to trifle with it. ]\Iany years have 
elapsed since I made that journey and during those 
years I have watched with keenest interest the des- 
tinies of those who came after. 

Of these some reached the goal only to turn back, 
after a little while, and retrace their steps. I can 
think of no more melancholy spectacle than the con- 
vert who becomes confused, loses his hold on spir- 
itual verities, and wanders back to the realm of 
doubt and negation. Such a one bids farewell to 
mental peace. AMien the light shines in the dark- 
ness and the darkness but briefly comprehends the 
light, then indeed does the subsequent night become 
hideous. 

I have always been humbly and reverently grate- 
ful that the Lord permitted me to see the Road so 
clearly that retreat would have been intellectual sui- 
cide. It was very simple. In my youth, faith and 

348 



REV. JOHN SPENSLEY, D.D., Ph.D. 349 

reason united to show me four things: Christ is 
the Son of God; He founded a Church; this was 
the CathoHc Church; He promised to that Church 
His presence and the guidance of the Holy Spirit 
even to the consummation of the world. These 
truths once grapsed and understood, all matters of 
detail, controversy, doctrine or dogma lost their 
perplexing and sometimes terrifying aspects in the 
realization that Christ would not allow His Church 
to err. A description, then, of my experience 
" Beyond the Road to Rome " might be summed up 
in one word : " Peace." 

However, by way of casual analysis, there is a 
feature of the Church, viewed as a human society, 
that is evident to> all yet not understood by all : her 
conservatism. Because of this she often proves 
disconcerting to converts and trying even to those 
born with the faith. 

One reason for the backsliding of converts is 
mental reaction. To them is given suddenly the 
wonderful vision of the City of God. All the 
spiritual beauty of the Church is unfolded at once. 
They are dazzled by the spectacle; their minds are 
exalted; they move about in a kind of golden dream. 
They imagine that all Catholics must be in the same 
intoxication of spirit and when they come in contact 
with crudeness, with plain workaday realities, they 
are shocked. They forget that they are still living 
on the dull drab earth ; that clouds must frequently 
roll between them and the heavens until they shall 



350 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

enter the life beyond the stars. With sorrow and 
astonishment have I seen enthusiastic converts fall 
away after a few weeks, only, of life in their new 
environment. 

Others of deeper mentality gradually fell away 
because they found the Church, in her government 
and methods, '' out of tune with the age." In this 
frame of mind they had for companions many who 
thought themselves practical Catholics. Yet to me 
the slow conservative attitude of the Church in deal- 
ing with the world's problems has been one of the 
strongest reasons, from a human standpoint, for 
remaining within her fold. 

In her government you will never find the Church 
indulging in glorious rainbow dreams. Heaven 
help us, did she do so ! The guidance of the Holy 
Spirit would then be an even more stupendous 
miracle than it is. Utopians, misguided reformers 
and Socialists indulge in dreams of such brilliancy 
that they sweep whole communities off their feet. 
Even science, with all her reputation for sanity, in- 
dulges at times in the most fantastic dreams; 
though her honesty brings her steadily along the 
path of truth. She never wanders long from God. 

But the Church does not dream. She is inspired, 
but she is practical. What has impressed me from 
the first is the calm way in which the Church takes 
the unpopular side of great questions and patiently 
waits, through storms of abuse and even persecu- 
tion, till the world comes around to her view. She 



REV. JOHN SPENSLEY, D.D., Ph.D. 351 

does not love to be unpopular, but she has to be 
right. And often it has been weary waiting till hu- 
manity came to its senses. 

She has been ridiculed and execrated for her 
stern attitude in the question of divorce. Yet now 
the serious minds of all creeds and nations recog- 
nize in that attitude the only salvation from an evil 
that is undermining the State. In our own country 
her stand on the school question has brought upon 
her the rancour of many Catholics and the general 
detestation of Protestants. She has been called 
intolerant, treasonable, inspired by most despicable 
motives. Yet now, other denominations are shyly 
attempting the experiment of parochial schools, 
while non-sectarian educators, confessing the in- 
adequacy of their system, are trying to invent a 
secularized composite religious training with which 
to strengthen it. 

The Church cannot be hurried or bullied or hyp- 
notized into policies that will lead her children 
astray. She looks generations, even centuries, 
ahead and takes her stand upon principles, though 
experience may foretell the rack and the stake. 
We do not have to worry, thank God, about mat- 
ters of faith. But even in merely human affairs it 
would almost seem as though the Church were like- 
wise infallible. 

I dwell, in this article, upon her consen^atism 
because it is so often misunderstood by the un- 
trained convert. If Catholics themselves occasion- 



352 



BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 



ally come under the spell of modernism — that 
archaic compound with the new name — it is not 
surprising that newcomers may sometimes have 
their doubts. The watchwords of the age are very 
captivating to the average ear and they are the 
watchwords of eternity. Pyrotechnics are often 
more interesting than beacon lights. Let the con- 
vert, therefore, in moments of anxiety concerning 
those things on which he has not the assurances of 
faith say : " Even in these, O Church of Christ, 
thou hast the words of eternal life! " If ever the 
thought comes that he cannot remain In the Church 
and be honest with his intellect, let him think calmly 
on the lessons of history. Then with deep joy will 
his soul exclaim : ** Thy light shines far, O City 
of Sion, Into the darkness of the night ! " 



THE RT. REV. MONSIGNOR WILLIAM E. 
STARR, D.D., 

Prelate of the Papal Household, and Rector Emeritus of Cor- 
pus Christi Church, Baltimore, Maryland. 

A few years ago, in compliance with a request 
for a contribution to the book, '' Some Roads to 
Rome in America," I furnished a brief account of 
the process by which I found my way thither. My 
life had been so uneventful and the steps by which 
I became a Catholic were so easy that there seemed 
but little to record. Of a reverential spirit, but by 
no means devout, I had no misgivings concerning 
the foundations of religion until about my eigh- 
teenth year, when I discovered that my elders, my 
natural guides and teachers, had themselves no firm 
grasp of the subject. In fact, I very soon perceived 
that they were annoyed by my questions which they 
put down to the conceit of a youthful prig, not to 
be taken seriously. Any explanation vouchsafed 
at all was driven home and clinched by an injunc- 
tion against being too wise. I had grown up lov- 
ing the Bible and was disconcerted to find that there 
were so many and such irreconcilable views of its 
character and content. Christianity, as it was pre- 
sented to me, was a hopeless mixture of discordant 

353 



354 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

sects. The account it gave of itself I found dis- 
tasteful, perplexing and illogical, a palpable compro- 
mise under which each sect claimed to live by let- 
ting all the others live. Upon one thing they were 
all passionately agreed, that God had given no in- 
fallible expositor of His Word, and that any claim 
of the sort was to be sternly reprobated. Upon 
one occasion it was suggested to me to seek an in- 
ter^'iew with the pastor of the church which I at- 
tended, the Presbyterian, and lay before him my 
difficulties and my heartburnings. That course 
seemed to promise well. The minister was a schol- 
arly man and an interesting preacher, with a large 
and influential following. Before venturing upon 
the interview, I hazarded a question as to its out- 
come. I was anxious to know if he would guar- 
antee the results of his Bible study as so indisput- 
ably true that no other clerg}'man of equal gifts 
with himself had ever drawn different and even 
opposite conclusions. I can recall my disgust upon 
being told that he would be a very arrogant and 
presumptuous man, if he did. The ridiculous /;;/- 
passe never seemed to strike my friends. A\'hen 
I remarked that it was hardly worth while to bother 
about it, I was told that I was an infidel, a skeptic, 
an atheist, and a lot of other reprehensible char- 
acters. If agnostics had existed in those days, I 
should doubtless have been pilloried with them, if 
hopeless ignorance be agnosticism. This was the 
more pitiable, as I had a reverent mind for God and 



RT. REV. MGR. WILLIAM E. STARR, D.D. 355 

all holy things. I knew good, devout people in 
plenty; but they could afiford me no help. It was 
no longer a question of personal worth and piety. 
The foundation itself of all reverence was at stake 
and there was no one to help me lay it. But the 
climax of my troubles was reached when a man 
failed me to whom I was devotedly attached, a man 
of serene intelligence, and unblemished integrity, 
the factor of the most of my opinions, upon whose 
faith I confidently leaned. Upon my putting a 
question to him concerning one of the fundamentals 
of the Christian religion, which called for a clear 
and straightforward answer, he shuffled for a mo- 
ment or two and then declined to answer me, saying 
that he feared his views on the subject would not be 
considered orthodox. There were then, and still 
are, I fear, numbers of men in a like cruel dilemma. 
They are ill at ease, and would be most unhappy 
were they tO' undertake the study of their religious 
position. They dread becoming unbelievers, and 
the Roman Catholic Church is an impossible alterna- 
tive not to be for an instant considered. For relief 
from their perplexities they throw themselves heart 
and soiul into benevolent and philanthropic activi- 
ties. The problems of the soul are covered up and 
put out of sight, smothered under a multitude of 
projects for the uplift of the submerged masses. 
All this may seem quite aside from the purpose of 
this book, which seeks to know how we converts 
have fared since we crossed the great divide. And 



356 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

yet in my case the prospect of the old confusion of 
mind, and spiritual disquiet, gives the reply to the 
question. God in His own good time brought me 
face to face with His Holy Church and by His 
grace *' I was not disobedient to the heavenly 
vision." 

Not only have I never had the slightest tempta- 
tion, much less inclination, to examine the Prot- 
estant position as to the rationale of Faith, but the 
passion of my life is to teach and to defend, to the 
utmost of my poor faculty, God's Holy Catholic 
Church. That is my one enthusiasm. Her teach- 
ings completely satisfy my mind, her precepts are 
all I need to guide my life; and the type of holiness 
w^hich she displays has no exemplar among the most 
devout souls whom I have ever known outside her 
fold. 



1 



WM. FREDERICK PAUL STOCKLEY, M.A., 

WOODSIDE, TIVOLI, CORK, IRELAND. 

Author, Educator; Professor of English and French, Univer- 
sity of New Brunswick, 1886-1902; Professor of English, 
Uliiversity of Ottawa, 1902-03; Head Master, St. Mary's 
Collegiate School, HaHfax, 1903-05 ; Professor of His- 
tory and English Literature in the National University of 
Ireland, teaching in Queen's College, Cork (now Uni- 
versity College) 1905-09; Professor of English m same 
University, 1909 to date. 

Unfortunately I cannot write as many Catholic 
years to my credit as I can non-Catholic; but if 
some fifteen years are added to my life, I shall have 
been a Catholic awakened, for as long a time as I 
was a self-opinionated controversialist or an im- 
penitent doubter; and I shall have a cause for my 
daringest thought that thus 

'' 'Twill be merry unto the grave to go." 
Still, twenty years merry, and after youth is gone, 
are no bad test ground for any stuff of a man's 
life which weathers them, and which is found a 
basis stronger at their end than at their beginning 
of a better self, of mental freedom, and of moral 
wisdom; stuff which holds out, resists, bears up; 
on which is built a firm place of vantage to watch 

357 



3S8 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

with pity and without swelling or pride, the errors 
and tempests in the vale below ; the impossible ideals, 
the vain striving therefor, the fighting to gain the 
tyranny of license, the blind endeavors to find rest, 
the unreality, the folly, the absence of standards by 
which to judge these things: the false self satisfac- 
tion, the pretence and pretentiousness, and the slav- 
ery to men's opinions in matters of mind. In con- 
trast with this, Catholicism means right judgment, 
checked only by the weakness or wickedness of 
Catholics. As we enter on the road beyond, not 
only does the secret and suppressed heart find a 
champion in the Church for the visions which young 
men see, for the generous resolve, for the love that 
is unselfish, for that desire to give up life to a cause, 
which some lives have expressed, and which youth 
still burns to emulate, when it is still in its glorious 
time of saying " what others have done may not 
I do?" and then of doing it — not only is the 
Church the champion of the heart, the scorner of 
the commonplace, the refuge for the divine mad- 
men and martyrs; tolerating in her bosom those of 
a less heroic mould, but ever thinking in her heart of 
hearts of the ideal of the saints, men who take less 
count of who's in, who's out, than even Lear or 
Plato's philosopher; men who would make life im- 
possible, as we say; and who think the things that 
poets think and artists dream, whose mouth can- 
not content it with mortality, yet whose charity 
covers all weak sinners but themselves, those whose 



m 



WM. FREDERICK PAUL STOCKLEY, M.A. 359 

odd cares and unworldliness make them mocked at 
by worldly lips, while they are revered in every 
heart's recess where Catholicism lingers, where it 
lives again in the renewed revelation of death, 
where it strikes the rock through which still can 
trickle some drops, from its unworldlike foun- 
tains. 

Not only is the great heart of humanity thus de- 
fended by the Mother of Saints, but the honest mind 
which thinks her thoughts is strangely enlightened; 
and, in its wisest thinking finds itself forestalled. 
Indifference or cynicism or despair may well seize 
the mind left by Calvinism to reject nature, or by 
free thinking to neglect grace. But the Catholic 
mind is marvellously encouraged to rest on reality 
and moral certainty; it acknowledges difficulties in 
darkness, yet reiterates its confidence that truth can- 
not contradict truth. 

And here it is, as I repeat, that you are strength- 
ened and encouraged in all thought, whenever you 
think and are a Catholic. It is simply intolerable — 
the present writer speaks as having come out of 
Anglicanism, and out of doubts — to be told that 
such and such a century had not the devotion to 
Mary as we cherish it, when such and such an 
earlier century had not explicit teaching of the In- 
carnation, until an (Ecumenical Council clearly de- 
fined it. None the less intolerable is it to have it 
said that the Church of one age is right in fixing, 
say, the Canon of Scripture ; but wrong is the Church 



360 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

of another age defining Transubstantiation. You 
cannot go hobbling all your life on such awkward 
tumbling down crutches. 

I turn now to the thought of how beyond the road 
to Rome, with the Eternal City as base of opera- 
tions, the indestructible Church being still there, we 
must live and think, and face the life of others, and 
understand them, if we are to help them, and to 
guide. As, in a conversion, there is a world known 
only to God and the soul He remakes, so in things 
spiritual there is what we cannot discuss, for to 
himself and his Maker a man standeth or falleth; 
and here we must live, as we must die, alone. 
Nevertheless man is asked '' Where is thy brother? '' 
and so far as he can he must help his brother. It 
is God's will that we bear one another's burdens, 
for by works of mercy men will be judged. To in- 
struct the ignorant is possible to the simplest by our 
good example. Others again have to answer more 
at length, by word written or spoken ; thus illustrat- 
ing the relation of Catholics to the world without. 
Every convert to the CJiurch universal has this op- 
portunity. In a sense, a Catholic, as to himself, 
has nothing to say. I mean — and it is not easy, 
I think, for others to understand this view, for the 
Catholic is on one side, and all other men are on 
the other — he no more discusses his own position 
than he tries to escape from off this planet, or out 
of his skin. In the Qiurch he lives, he is; he ac- 
cepts her teaching because he is a Catholic. Before 



% 



WM. FREDERICK PAUL STOCKLEY, M.A. 36 1 

his conversion he may have been, Hke Newman, 
going to submit, or acknowledge or see things as 
they are in Church and World, or he may go into 
Catholicism without knowing Catholics, and dis- 
liking what he hears of them ; he may be like Coven- 
try Patmore, when in, with a half fanciful horror of 
priests; or like Manning, seeing the causes for the 
Church's slow progress in the faults of Catholics. 
But of one thing he is sure — that once a Catholic 
his position needs nO' apology, even though he may, 
to help others, explain it. The great Church of 
Humanity suggests, as a Matthew Arnold felt, all 
the pell mell of the men and women of Shake- 
speare's plays. The Church has the burden of the 
world on its back ; and the buzzing critics have often 
charged her with all the ill doings of followers and 
chiefs, reflecting in their lives the ill deeds of their 
times. Unluckily, said Cardinal Newman — he 
means, luckily — we never kept a record of Prot- 
estant scandals. Nor do we see the clergymen con- 
verts to Catholicism get up and rail; like the poor 
ex-priest over the garden wall. He might indeed 
add that not only are the bad doings of Catholics, 
or their imperfections and dulness, chargeable to 
the Church just because she has been the Church 
of all sorts and conditions of men; but that also 
these doings may be matched in the good she has 
done. For, besides her benefactions, has she not 
been a putter down of the mighty, a queller of the 
barbarian in primitive forests, an organizer, a beau- 



362 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

tifier? We are not going to hear any more, in the 
world of comparative history, to the effect that the 
Puritans loved liberty for others as well as for them- 
selves, and that Cromwell's toleration meant tolera- 
tion for the vast majority of Christians; that Eliza- 
beth's rack did not go daily, though we never hear 
that it had any of the legal safe-guards of the 
Inquisition in Spain; or that priests and nuns were 
not flayed, tortured, burnt, massacred, amid whole- 
sale devastation of churches, cloisters, homes, and 
all beauty of civilization, by the murderous Cal- 
vinist fanatics of France, retaliated on by the furious 
Paris Catholic mob on St. Bartholomevv^'s Day; 
even as Irish Catholics, provoked at that time be- 
yond any others (so a Burke thought), more mildly 
retaliated, in the rising of 1641. I am told that 
there are Catholic school histories in English which 
make no mention of persecution under Queen Mary. 
I have looked. I never saw one. But was there 
any one Protestant school history, when we were 
young, which told of the priests of the old religion 
in England who died for saying Mass under Queen 
Elizabeth; praying for her as their queen, but re- 
fusing her newly cut out religion as their plan of 
salvation? I never saw one, nor heard of one, nor 
of anyone who heard or saw. Green published 
his Short History, at that time, without mentioning 
them. In his later editions, he felt the coming on 
of truth, and he put in at least one paragraph on the 
English Catholic martyrs. 



WM. FREDERICK PAUL STOCKLEY, M.A. 363 

And so, as I say, to recount crimes of Catholics, 
or even of Popes, is old despairing or desperate talk; 
and to tell of how disagreeable religious people 
and Catholics may seem, as compared with their 
unguided or misguided fellows, is no talk to the 
point either. Of course there are always those who 
are humanly bad. But Catholicism is much too old 
a doctor not to understand human nature; the 
Church of the confessional knows too much to be 
caught with chaff or siren song. There is one thing 
certain, and it is this: that talk about worldly suc- 
cess, and progress in wealth, and luxury, is killing 
more souls than ever were killed by starvation; all 
these things must ever seem to the Catholic Church 
and to her greatest souls as things essentially in- 
different, as a part of the passing show. It is the 
realities of life that seem to us of greatest moment. 
I never was in a Catholic church where ears polite 
would not be shocked by hearing of judgment to 
come, and of sin as the one thing to fear; there, at 
least, one feels that real equality underlies all, and 
that the true worth of man lies in what each has to 
guard, the eternal jewel of his soul. 

Whoever saw the poor as he sees them in 
Catholic churches? "I sadly confess," said Arch- 
bishop Benson of Canterbury, "that abroad the 
(Catholic) Cathedrals belong apparently to the 
poor; the greater the churches, the more the poor 
seem to use them. Not so here (in England). I 
yearn for that sight.'' Which sight Dr. Benson's 



364 BEYOND THE RO-\D TO ROME 

Catholic predecessors saw all over England. His 
son, Monsignor Benson, preaching in new Cathohc 
Cathedrals in the Xew World, has also seen this 
same sight A\Tiat other religion has such an ex- 
perience of missionar)' work, in huts and camps, 
in filth, and cold, in misery of ice and vermin, 
amid bestiaUty, brutaUty and murder, as that, for 
instance, which its cultivated French Cathohc con- 
fessors went through who have left us Lcs Rela- 
tions des JesuiteSy the first records of North 
American history? The good earnest work of 
many Protestant missior:ar:es. perhaps specially 
High Chmch AngUcar.s h s : :: :r :f the terri- 
ble heroism of the grea: c ai-^r^ i u 'Church. It 
is E issue: a: \'ersa:lles and not '^r^v; Taylor 
across the channel in his Golden Grove, who echoes 
le cri de misere which he hears with shame from 
the poor. It was connection with Rome that saved 
French CathoUcism from the subserviency which 
the EngUsh schismatic Chm"ch showed. . . . 

The Hon. Dudley Wooten, member of Con- 
gress from Seattle, Washington, has said to us 
lately : " I am not myself a member of the Catho- 
lic communion, but I do recognize — what ever}- im- 
partial obser\'er realizes — that the Cathohc Church 
is to-day the only form of organized Qiristianity . 
that is vital enough to merit consideration, and 
faithful enough to command respect It is per- 
fectly natural, then, that the allied forces of infi-l 
dehty, indifferentism, and a decadent Protestant- 



WM. FREDERICK PAUL STOCKLEY, M.A. 365 

ism should combine in an unholy crusade against it. 
To do so, however, in the name of religious liberty 
and toleration, is so manifestly insincere and dis- 
gusting that I rrtust decline to read the literature of 
such a syndicate of hypocrisy and malice. 

" Every intelligent man in the United States who 
is enlightened enough to be capable of discernment, 
and not so prejudiced as to deny the truth, realizes 
that amid the disintegrating and disorderly ele- 
ments of our civilization, the Catholic Church stands 
as the defender and conservator of all that is most 
vital and valuable in the constitution and institu- 
tions of civilized society. She takes an active and 
intelligent interest in politics and legislation tot that 
extent and for that purpose only — to preserve the 
sanctity of the home, the authority of organized 
government, the safeguards of virtue and piety in 
public and private life, and the equal recognition 
and protection of every religious creed that is not 
in itself a denial of lawful authority. 

" It is the deliberate judgment of all thoughtful 
men, both in the Church and out of it, that she is 
destined to achieve her highest triumphs of useful- 
ness to mankind in this Republic." . . . 

There is no end to what I could say, had I time 
and space, of the essentials for us, of the acci- 
dents against us. If there is a revelation, if there 
is a Church, Catholicism is the most interesting 
thing in the world, as its Papacy is the most seri- 
ous institution existing. The outward manifesta- 



366 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

tion of it to historians is but a slight wonder to 
what has been its power, not only in the hearts, but 
in the minds of men, who differ otherwise in all 
that can keep men asunder. This unity of belief 
binds Pope as it binds peasant, and in this com- 
munion alone can no one be priest ridden, or ridden 
by any man's opinions. And Catholics of all man- 
kind are most happy in supernatural light. 

Outside the Church they ask us : " Did you find 
peace and security? '' '' Xot that, but certainty and 
reality.'' 

]May I recall the words of one ^ whose name, as 
ours, will be forgotten, but one so beloved when an 
Anglican minister, that his rough farmers came and 
wept on his shoulder when he had to leave them 
and go to Rome? Whatever be his rehgion, I 
shall have Mr. Alexander at my death bed, one of 
his wandering sheep lamented; for all knew him, 
when sorrow and death were near. It was my priv- 
ilege to be received into the Church with him. 

The dearest friend to me, the kindest man. 
The best-conditioned and unwearied spirit 
In doing courtesies. 

If there is ancient honour in the world, it was in 
this exiled lover of his England. He had been near 
a quarter of a centur}- a good parson.; he was near 
a quarter of a century a better Catholic la}Tnan; 
buried, last year, in the habit of St. Francis. 

^ Finlow Alexander, once sub-dean of the cathedral, Fred- 
ericton, Xew Brunswick. 



WM. FREDERICK PAUL STOCKLEY, M.A. 367 

'' What can I do but send them my love? " was 
his commission to me when I asked for a message 
for some old parishioners who' wished to be remem- 
bered by him. " Tell them how ever more and more 
strongly there reveals itself to me that the Cath- 
olic Church had, in God's mind, for its main design, 
the meeting of the spiritual needs of the poor. Ask 
them, for me, if, in their heart of hearts, they can 
say this of their own experience in the Church of 
England, apart from any affection they may have 
formed for any particular clergyman belonging to 
it. Ask them, in short, from me, if the Church of 
England, as such, has ever filled any spiritual void 
in their hearts; has been to them, in any degree, 
what the Catholic Church is to the poor; their 
strength, their stay, their support, their solace, their 
joy, their daily food — their all — 'an eye to the 
blind, and a foot to the lame.' Tell them, from 
me, what I see in Montreal, how from five in the 
morning till six at even, the ebb and flow of the 
poor, to and from their loved Church, goes unceas- 
ingly on — how, burdened and broken-down they 
enter, how, cheerful and strengthened for their 
many and awful trials, they come away — and ask 
them if their experience of the Church of England 
answers to these things." Sit anima mea cum illo. 

Then, every English-speaking convert of middle 
age would like to quote his master, and that would 
be Cardinal Newman, a Catholic in 1845. 

In 1848, Newman said: 



368 ' BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

** I shrink to contemplate the guilt I should have 
incurred, and the account which at the last day 
would have lain against me had I not become a 
Catholic; and it pierces me to the heart to think 
that so many excellent persons should be kept in 
bondage in the Church of England, and should, 
among the many good points they have, want the 
great grace of faith, to trust God and follow His 
leadings. This is my state of mind, and I would 
it could be brought home to all and everyone who 
in default of real arguments for remaining Angli- 
cans, amuse themselves with dreams and fancies.'' 
And some fifteen years later he says in words pur- 
posely strong ('^ so that questioners will believe me, 
and have done with it") — '* This being my state 
of mind, to add, as I hereby go on to do, that I 
have no intention and never had any intention of 
leaving the Catholic Church, and becoming a Prot- 
estant again would be superfluous, except that Prot- 
estants are alw^ays on the lookout for some loop- 
hole or evasion in a Catholic's statement of fact. 
Therefore, in order to give them full satisfaction, 
if I can, I do hereby profess ex-animo with an ab- 
solute internal assent and consent, that Protestant- 
ism is the dreariest of possible religions; that the 
thought of the Anglican service makes me shiver, 
and the thought of the Thirty-nine Articles makes 
me shudder. Return to the Church of England ! No ! 
' The net is broken and we are delivered.' I should 
be a consummate fool (to use a mild termx) if in 



WM. FREDERICK PAUL STOCKLEY, M.A. 369 

my old age I left ' the land flowing with milk and 
honey ' for the city of confusion and the house of 
bondage." 

And in one of the last letters he wrote, he says : 

*' I will not close our correspondence without 
testifying my sincere love and adhesion to the 
Catholic Roman Church. . . . And did I wish to 
give a reason for this full and absolute devotion, 
what could, what can I say, but that those great and 
burning truths which I learned when a boy from 
Evangelical teaching I have found impressed upon 
my heart with fresh and ever-increasing force by 
the Holy Roman Church. The Church has added 
to the simple Evangelicism of my first teachers, but 
it has obscured, diluted, enfeebled nothing of it; on 
the contrary I have found a power, a resource, a 
comfort, a consolation in our Lord's Divinity and 
atonement, in His divine and human power, which 
all good Catholics indeed have, but which Evangeli- 
cal Christians have but faintly. But I have not 
strength to say more." 

An Irish convert would like to add a quotation 
from one with whom he thus likes to think he has 
fellowship. Father Maturin; words written by him 
ten years ago : 

'' For the last six years " (i. e., ever since his con- 
version) '' I have never had a doubt, nor has the 
question of the claims of the Anglican Church ever 
crossed my mind as a practical one. I am serenely 
happy and wholly at peace in my mind, and the 



370 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

questions which disturbed me for years have passed 
from my mind altogether. . . . 

'' From the day I made up my mind and went to 
Beaumont to be received, the Enghsh Church 
melted before my eyes, and as a Church has never 
taken substantial form again. As Newman said: 
' I went by and lo ! it was gone ; I sought it and its 
place could nowhere be found.' 

'' Perhaps I could convince some of those who 
say that I am inclined to return . . . how untrue 
that is, by telling them in unmeasured words what 
the English Church has seemed to me since I left it; 
but I will not stoop to such means, either to con- 
vince or silence them. It affords me no consolation 
to abuse what was once so great a reality to me, and 
what most of my dearest friends still belong to; and 
I have never been able to understand or respect those 
who seem to think that it does honour to their pres- 
ent convictions to ridicule what once they revered. 
It has been enough for me to try and follow Our 
Lord's words: Let the dead bury their dead, and 
go thou and preach the kingdom of God ; . . . and 
I believe such positive preaching in the long run 
must be more effective than any bitterness towards 
what to me is dead and buried." 

'' I never performed a more reasonable, a more 
manly act, or one more in accordance with the rights 
and dignity of human nature, though not done save 
by Divine grace moving and assisting thereto, than 



WM. FREDERICK PAUL STOCKLEY, M.A. 37 1 

when I kneeled to the Bishop of Boston/' said 
Brownson, " and asked him to hear my confession 
and reconcile me to the Church, or when I read my 
abjuration/' of Presbyterianism, Congregational- 
ism, Universalism, Humanitarianism, " and publicly 
professed the Cathohc Faith; for the basis of all 
true nobility of soul is Christian humility; and 
nothing is more manly than submission to God, or 
more reasonable than to believe God's word on His 
own authority/' 

Personally, and as a last word, I add, that my 
only regret is that I can never again so kneel and ab- 
jure — I should like to do so daily — and by the act 
of submitting to the Catholic Church declare my 
union with good and truth wherever found. 

To any prospective Catholic, as to any Catholic, 
in fact, I would leave the parting words which one 
of the best and most thoughtful of men, an Angli^ 
can clergyman, wrote to me : 

'' Let not your words go beyond your actions, 
nor your actions fall short of your words/' 

I myself have received little but kindness since 
I became a Catholic. I probably am somewhat the 
worse therefor. But, anyway, and chiefly, let ye 
who are called higher, or can climb further, even 
if through much suffering, refuse not your high 
calling. Listen and look; hear Catholic words 
from CathoHc priests; look at the Church, that 
great institution, and at its works as they are ex- 
emplified in those who live thereby. Go tO' its con- 



372 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

vents, read its prayer books, see what part love and 
not hate has in its ideals. Then : ^* fear ye not the 
reproach of men/' 



FATHER FIDELIS OF THE CROSS, 
PASSIONIST. 

(Very Rev. James Kent Stone, A.M., LL.D., D.D.) 

One time President of Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, and 
of Hobart College, Geneva, N. Y. ; entered the Church 
1869; Passionist 1877; established the Order of Passion- 
ists in Argentina; Provincial of the Order in U. S. 
1905-8; returned to South America in 1910; author of 
The Invitation Heeded, 

Four and forty years have passed since Our Lord 
in His goodness brought me into the fold of His 
holy Church. It does not seem so long. I can un- 
derstand how the aged Patriarch could say to the 
Egyptian King: " Few and evil have been the years 
of thy servant," for, great as was His mercy in 
leading me to the truth (and I have never ceased to 
thank Him for it), more wonderful has seemed to 
me His patience through the years, spent indeed in 
His service, but marred by so much ingratitude and 
so many sins, until the time should come when I 
could say from the depths of a happy heart : '' I 
grew tired of offending Him before He grew weary 
of pardoning me." Ha Saint could say this, surely 
a sinner may learn to say it, too. During the brief 
day of life that is left, may His grace keep me from 
offending Him any more. 

Z7Z 



1 



374 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

I have been asked whether I could tell of things 
which have *' strengthened the certainty " in my 
mind that " I took the right step '' w^hen I became 
a Catholic. I do not think that anything could in- 
crease a conviction which was based on the certitude 
of faith; and yet, in a true sense experience may be 
said to confirm our faith, by illustrating its beauty; 
throwing fresh gleams on the gold-embroidered 
vesture of the Queen circumdata varietate. 

Doubts there were not, and could not be — '' ten 
thousand difficulties," as we know, '' do not make 
one doubt " ; but the vanishing of what once seemed 
difficulties is a consoling, and perhaps strengthen- 
ing experience, and there is honest pleasure in tell- 
ing objectors that their cavils spring from an ig- 
norance that was once our own. 

Had I the time and the strength, I would gladly 
attempt some little narrative that might prove serv- 
iceable, culling, it might be, from memories of life 
in quiet monasteries, or of mission work in fields 
afar. More especially would I desire to say some- 
thing for the sake of my Catholic fellow-country- 
men in the North, something positive and plain, 
concerning the true state of Catholicity in this beau- 
tiful but little known Southern continent of Amer- 
ica. This brief word is to say that the years which 
I have spent here have left me edified and humbled. 
There are scandals, — of course there are, if we 
look for them. But there have been Saints and 
martyrs here of whom the world knows nothing. 



FATHER FIDELIS OF THE CROSS 375 

And there are saints still, heroes and heroines of 
devotion and charity. The history of the Catholic 
Church in South America has never been written, 
may never be written ; but it would be a great work : 
a sto-ry of devotion, of abnegation, of faith, both 
fascinating and true. 

In the Sierras of Cordoba, Argentina, Feast of the 
Assumption, 191 3. 



MARIA LONGWORTH STORER, 

CINCINNATI, OHIO. 

Wife of the Hon. Bellamy Storer, sometime Ambassador to 
Austria-Hungary. 

More than a hundred years ago Count Joseph de 
Maistre wrote a '' Lettre a une dame Anglicane," 
in which he asserted that '' an honest man never 
changes his rehgion." 

These words express a great deal in one sentence 
and they are absohitely true. A man whose re- 
Hgion changes has let go of something which he 
once held sacred ; he has " killed the thing he loved " 
by Denial ; he has not been honest with his own soul, 
but through self-conceit he has deceived it into the 
conviction that its religious belief was a delusion; 
and (if he be afHicted by Modernism), he keeps on 
changing and denying, until he barters the poor 
remnant of his former creed for a godless humani- 
tarianism. His religion is destroyed, and he, him- 
self, is responsible for its destruction. '' An honest 
man never changes his rehgion." Conversion is the 
exact opposite of negation. Conversion changes 
nothing; it fosters and develops in every soul even 
the smallest existent germ of religion. Xo briefest 
atom of sincere faith, however humble or primitive, 

Z7^ 



MARIA LONGWORTH STORER 377 

or rudimentary (even if it be only the groping of a 
poor savage toward the Great Spirit and the happy 
hunting-ground), is despised or rejected by God; 
and every honest soul who seeks Him (no matter 
by what devious way) shall surely find Him waiting 
at the end. 

'' O poor little one tossed with tempest, without 
all comfort, behold I will lay thy stones in order; 
and will lay thy foundations with sapphire." 

Thus does God's grace build a temple of faith in 
every soul that prays for it ; and when the temple is 
complete, it becomes the shrine of Christ, the Lord! 
Finally, one can say also of a Catholic : " An honest 
man never changes his religion." When temptation 
and the darkness of evil threaten him, and Christ 
says to his soul: "Will you, too, go away?" he 
answers, with Simon Peter : " Lord, whither shall 
we go? Thou hast the words of Eternal Life." 

When I became a Catholic, twenty-one years ago, 
some of my non-Catholic friends accounted for the 
vagary in a way quite satisfactory to themselves; 
they said that I was lured into the Church by the 
beauty of her temples and by her impressive cere- 
monies. It is quite true that the Catholic Church 
appeals to the senses and satisfies them. The eye 
revels in the wonders of Catholic architecture ; the 
master-works of Catholic art as seen in the sculp- 
ture of tombs and altars, the coloring and splendor 
of pictures and of vestments. The ear is enrap- 
tured by Catholic music — the grandeur of masses 



378 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

and anthems and the dignity of Gregorian chants; 
even the sense of smell is delighted by the soft 
breath of incense, or the odor of roses and lilies be- 
fore Our Lady's altar. The beauty of the Catholic 
Church is undeniable to the senses; but it has a 
deeper meaning to the soul, as the Shrine of God! 
If Protestant demonstrations of prayer or praise 
seem meagre and plain in comparison, one must re- 
member that the " reformers " would have it so. 
They were eager to hack in pieces the statues and 
to shatter the stained glass windows; to simplify 
the Church of England and to divest her ministers 
of their " trinkets " and " muniments of supersti- 
tion." In all this they were quite logical. Having 
driven the King from His tabernacle, there surely 
was no longer any reason for preserving His Royal 
splendor; nor the beauty of the House where His 
Glory dwelt, after that Glory had departed. In 
every Protestant church, therefore, the minister is 
the central figure: his sermon the important event. 
If he talks well and is amusing (above all, in these 
modern times, if he be intelligently heterodox) he 
draws delighted crowds; if he be a pious and dull 
man, he has only a small congregation of strict 
" church-goers " and they complain about his 
preaching ! 

For us Catholics, on the contrary, the sermon — 
if there be one — is a mere episode — the Divine 
sacrifice is everything; for the Old Testament 
prophecy is fulfilled in every Catholic Church 



MARIA LONGWORTH STORER 379 

throughout the world : " They shall make me a 
Sanctuary, and I will dwell in the midst of them." 
At every celebration of the Mass Christ's promise is 
kept; '' I will not leave you orphans: I will come to 
you." '' The Bread that I will give is my Flesh for 
the Hfe of the world. If any man eat of this bread, 
he shall live forever." Here is the source and cen- 
ter of Christ's Church, whence Divine Light goes 
forth like rays from the sun; here is the beating 
heart of all Christendom, the magnet that draws 
souls to the Sacred Tabernacle. Take that away and 
the whole fabric would fall to* pieces. This Divine 
Life is in the Catholic Church, and nowhere out- 
side; for the Reformation deliberately banished the 
Real Presence, suppressed the sacrifice of the Mass, 
and even substituted tables for the altars of God. 

The axe of the '' reformer " cleft the root of the 
Vine — and the severed branch has been slowly 
withering ever since, until the Protestant ^' Religion 
of the Future," as defined by Charles W. Eliot, 
President Emeritus of Harvard, ^' is not bound to 
any creed, dogma, book or institution." With re- 
gard to his own countrymen, Dr. Eliot asserts that 
'' Millions of Americans find in Masonic organiza- 
tions, lodges of Odd Fellows and fraternal societies, 
granges and trades-unions, at once their practical re- 
ligion and the satisfaction of their social needs. 
The Spiritualists, Christian Scientists and Mental 
Healers of all sorts manifest a good deal of ability 
to draw people away from the traditional churches 



380 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

and to discredit traditional dogmas and formal 
creeds ! " What is left of Protestant Christianity 
in Dr. Eliot's new religion? Can any sane soul be 
tempted to abandon Christ's Church upon the Rock 
and stray through marsh and mire into this howling 
wilderness ? It is indeed incredible that any human 
being who has been once set free by the Truth should 
willingly go back to darkness and vacancy : to merge 
himself once more in the ghastly tragedy or the tire- 
some farce of a careless heathen w^orld. Even to 
return to the Anglican Church (nearest to the Cath- 
olic) would be, as Monsignor Benson puts it, " the 
exchange of certitude for doubt, of faith for agnos- 
ticism, of substance for shadow, of brilliant light for 
somber gloom, of historical world-wide fact for un- 
historical, provincial theory." 

The personal history of all renegade Catholics, 
and the effect of their lapse from the faith of the 
Church upon their children and their children's chil- 
dren, makes one absolutely certain that such a step 
invariably leads toward infidelity. The great ma- 
jority of these individuals abandon even nominal 
Christianity altogether, and they invariably are pos- 
sessed of . one strongly marked phobia: a bitter 
hatred against the church which they have deserted. 
One sees this in many countries, but it is especially 
apparent in France ; where the Republic, under Radi- 
cal tyranny, has become a hot-bed of religious perse- 
cution. 

I hope that I have answered clearly the question 



MARIA LONGWORTH STORER 381 

why I am " satisfied to remain a Catholic/' and that 
I have given good reasons for it. After all, the 
simplicity of our faith is its greatest attraction, be- 
cause it is the faith of a child; without which Our 
Lord Himself has said no one may enter the King- 
dom of Heaven. 

Let me end by a translation of a little prayer in 
verse written by Saint Catherine of Sienna — the 
words are literally rendered, but the metre is 
changed, as the '' terza rima '' is very difficult in 
English. 

"Nearer to God, His will to serve, 
Spirit Divine, my spirit draw : 
Inflame my heart with love and awe, 
From evil thoughts my soul preserve; 
Lord God, uplifted by Thy Might, 
My faltering courage waxes bold 
To front all ills that life may hold; 
Oh Christ, my Love! Oh Christ, my Light! " 



CARLTON STRONG, 

PITTSBURGH, PA. 

Architect ; mem. Am. Inst, of Architects ; Am. Soc. of Civil 
Engineers; Royal Soc. of Arts; late President of the 
Anglo-Roman Union; pen name, Thomas UEstrange. 

I 

The religious predilections of the average person 
are usually inherited and, unless a family tradition 
is somehow disturbed in a preceding generation, the 
prejudices of a family habit will often survive the 
beliefs from which they take their origin. 

Once one or both parents or grandparents have 
chosen to depart from the habitual family view- 
point, those that follow are more apt to imitate their 
example of freedom than they are to adopt their con- 
clusions. 

Even under the most favorable circumstances, all 
sectarian conceptions of Christianity lack the f ecun- ■ I 
dity requisite to normal reproduction; when once 
disturbed, their hope of continuance is gone in the 
direction of the disturbance. When, after a break 
in the family tradition, one finds himself at the age 
of religious consciousness being brought up in a 
Darwinized type of Zwingilian Anglicanism, it is 
not surprising that he should soon afterward be 

382 



i< 



CARLTON STRONG 383 

reading Thomas Paine and similar writers with the 
results that might be expected. 

By this route, one may readily become a full- 
fledged "free-thinker'' — so-called — at the age of 
fourteen. But " free-thinking," — so-called — is not 
so bad if it leads to real freedom and activity 
of thought, and to the cultivation of the open mind. 
At any rate, the writer came in time to regard Chris- 
tianity and Catholicism as interchangeable terms ; 
and because of its fruits, or effects, he felt that it 
should be upheld as an influence for good for which 
there has never been any adequate substitute. 

It was through the instrumentality of a High- 
Church clergyman, of blessed memory, that he w^as 
eventually led to accept Christianity as reasonable 
and true, and by him he was still later led to believe 
that the Protestant Episcopal Church had never 
been released from the obligation to teach tradi- 
tional and Scriptural Christianity, that is to say, 
Catholicism. Although — as he readily admitted 
— it had not always nor everywhere done so. 

In spite of her captivity to political and other 
evils, Anglicanism was pictured as the normal center 
of religious unity for the English-speaking race, 
and especially was it the duty of those whom God 
had placed in her fold to labor for the restoration 
of her past glories in freedom of faith. Catholic 
practice and good works. 

But this position will lead one in time to become 
more or less acquainted with the " arrogant '' claims 



384 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

of another '' great Communion/' and while we were 
rather strenuous in our effort to make her past 
glories our own, we were inclined not only to ex- 
aggerate her faults, but tO' insist that they were too 
great to be curable without the example and influ- 
ence of a purified Anglicanism to guide her back to 
the Primitive model. 

When one has at last made all these, and many 
more points of view^ to the same purpose, his own, 
it is very disturbing tO' be confronted, against one's 
will, with a growing conviction that Anglicanism 
owTs its separate existence as an institution to mo- 
tives and deeds which were not such as a well mean- 
ing man can entirely commend. In fact, he comes 
to see that the separation was accomplished by fraud 
and violence and for mixed purposes that were, for 
the most part, essentially evil. 

The questions then quite naturally arise : " Were 
these men with these purposes right and the body of 
the old believers consequently wrong? " " Did the 
property of infallibility, which they admit resides 
in the Church, leave the old body headed by Rome 
and attach itself to them and to their work? " 

These questions are not merely disturbing, but 
they lead one to take up a very disagreeable and un- 
welcome line of investigation. In the end, such an 
investigation, — unless grace intervenes to save the 
trouble, — finally narrows down to the question of 
Orders. One is afraid in his conscience to deny 
the validity of sacramental forms given and received 



CARLTON STRONG 385 

in good faith, and with comfort at the time, without 
the clearest and most certain conviction ; at least not 
until he has properly grasped the old principle of a 
living final authority. 

The period of experimentation was never more 
tersely summarized than by a recent lecturer ^ at 
the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, when he said: 

" The Established Church, as such, is the child 
ai Elizabeth. The last convocation of the Ecclesia 
Anglicana in 1559 declared its belief in the Su- 
premacy of the Successors of St. Peter. But the 
politicians . . , drew up an oath deliberately re- 
pudiating the doctrine. With one exception the en- 
tire hierarchy of England refused the oath and was 
deposed and, with twoi or three exceptions, suffered 
the martyrdom of life imprisonment. With that 
act the . . . new hierarchy and its followers severed 
their communion with 

(a) the Ecclesia Anglicana of the convocation ; 

(b) with the Patriarch of the West (the pope of 
Rome) ; 

(c) with the Ecclesia Catholica. 

This was the moment of deliberate separation from 
Rome." 

Elizabeth's choice for first Primate of the new 
line fell upon Matthew Parker, whom she knew as 
one who had willingly served as chaplain to her 
mother, Anne Boleyn, Her mandate to several 

1 Rev. Vincent McNabb, O.P., quoted in The Lavip, July, 
1913. 



386 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

bishops in good standing with the old church to 
consecrate Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury was 
refused by all of them. 

After much scurrying about, four persons, — 
Barlow, Hodgkins, Scory and Coverdale, — were 
found willing tO' " consecrate " Parker on Royal au- 
thority and impart to him, as far as they could, the 
^* Apostolic Succession " and the mission and juris- 
diction of an episcopate of which they had never 
themselves been members. Scory and Coverdale 
were creatures of the Ed war dine rite and therefore 
not Catholics at all. Coverdale did not believe in 
the episcopal office and never, save at this time to 
please the Queen, would he consent to act as a bishop. 
Hodgkins was a suffragan and consequently never 
held the title or jurisdiction of an English See on 
any authority. 

The claim for continuity between the old and the 
State Church of England must therefore rest en- 
tirely upon Barlow, " sometime bishop of Bath and 
Wells," who is referred to as the " chief consecra- 
tor "of Parker. Although no record or proof of 
Barlow's consecration has ever been discovered, he 
is the only one of the four who is claimed to have 
been consecrated to, and to have held the title of, 
an English See under the old Pontifical. 

But by who's authority? Barlow, it seems, was 
a monk who, under Henry VHI, acquiesced in the 
confiscation of his own religious house and in the 
betrayal of his brethren, in consideration of his being 



CARLTON STRONG 387 

made a '' bishop " by Royal authority. And this 
at a time when the King, being short of friends, was 
wilHng to reward those who supported him in his 
struggle with the Church on a plain moral issue ! 

Against the Church and his brethren. Barlow 
stood with the King " with a zeal born of favors yet 
tO' come/' 

But did Barlow thereby become a bishop of Ec- 
clesia Anglicana? Let the Primitive church, to 
which the reformers appealed, speak for itself. If 
one can suppose the bishops under Henry VIII, after 
the separation, to have been in good standing with 
the old Church, and that they actually did conse- 
crate Barlow under the old Pontifical by Royal au- 
thority, — a better status than history warrants, — 
we have something like a parallel to some primitive 
casesi. 

Canon XXX, of the Apostolical Canons,^ says: 

"If any bishop obtain possession of a church by 
the aid of temporal power, let him be deposed and 
excommunicated, and all who communicate with 
him." 

The Second Ecumenical Council, — I Constanti- 
nople, — A. D. 381, says: 

Canon IV. " Concerning Maximus the Cynic 
and the disorder which has happened in Constanti- 
nople on his account, it is decreed that Maximus 
never was and is not now a Bishop; that those zvho 
have been ordained by him are in no order zvhatevcr 
^ Dr. Percival's text. Anglican. 



388 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

of the clergy; since all which has been done con- 
cerning him or by him, is declared to be invalid." 
(Ibid.) 

Maximus, surnamed the Cynic, was a scamp who. 
betrayed his friends and who fooled and won the 
backing of many Churchmen, including the Patri- 
arch of Alexandria. He sought his ends by fraud 
and violence and, about A. D. 379, was intruded in 
the See of Constantinople after a private consecra- 
tion by legitimate bishops whom he had won over 
to his cause with the aid of supporters imported 
from abroad. He affected zeal for the Nicene 
Faith, though he mixed this with cynic philosophy. 
He posed, of course, as an uncompromising re- 
former, and questioned the regularity of the friend 
whose place he plotted to obtain. 

These canons appear to establish the principle 
that Episcopal Orders cannot be validly conveyed 
on temporal authority, nor even by real bishops 
when acting for themselves or for a party against 
the normal and public authority of the Church. 

The case of Maximus was referred to Pope Da- 
masus, who condemned the proposal *^ to consecrate 
a restless man, an alien from the Christian profes- 
sion " to such an office. Even the most zealous An- 
glican students ought to be satisfied vrhen both the 
Pope and an undisputed General Council are agreed 
on a general principle, especially when the quotations 
given are from Dr. Percival's text. 



CARLTON STRONG 389 

Now as touching necessary faith, Cyril, in his 
Epistle to Nestorius, about 431, says: 

'' But it would not be sufficient for your reverence 
to confess wnth us only the symbol of the faith . . . 
for you have not held and interpreted it rightly, 
but rather perversely; even though you confess with 
your voice the form of words." (Ibid.) 

The first canon cited was reaffirmed by the Sev- 
enth General Council, II Nice, A. D. 787. The an- 
cient Epitome of Canon III says : " Every election 
made by a secular magistrate (prince) is null" 
(Ibid.) 

Can anyone hesitate between a Primitive General 
Council and the opinions of the Elizabethan court 
circle ? ^ 

Is there any room for the suspicion that the Spirit 
of Truth may have left the old Church and followed 
a clique of political and religious experimentors who, 
for the most part, are pictured as scamps by reputa- 
ble historians? 

^ This statement may lead to some controversy ; it may be 
thought I do not distinguish between what is invalid and 
what it illicit. But it involves intention; a person conferring 
orders must intend to do what Christ intended. It is de- 
batable whether the men who consecrated Barlow or Parker 
had the requisite intention ; the Holy See has said they had 
not. I think the General Council that condemned Maximus 
felt that the " Consecrators " lacked the necessary intention 
when they acted for a party, and not for the Body of Christ — 
the Church. The claim of Maximus was stronger than that of 
either Barlow or Parker, and the early Church said he was 
no Bishop. I have pointed out the parallel, and let the Council 
speak for itself. It is clear that the conclusion the Council 
arrived at expressed the mind of the Church. 



390 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

II 

For the pilgrim from a far off land, the journey 
to the Eternal City is often a long and troublesome 
one. Steadily, as he finally approaches her gates, his 
admiration of her splendid antiquity and present sta- 
bility deepens within him. Under the spell of a near 
view of her lights and shadows, he wnll probably 
slacken his pace, and delay for a time his entrance, 
so that he may the better and more thoroughly con- 
template her for the last time from without and 
once more sift the reflections that crowd in upon 
him. 

He knows that he cannot enter half-heartedly; 
that the final step that will complete the journey will 
cut him off from many ties of kindred and friend- 
ship that are hard to part w^ith. Even his motives 
will be attacked with so much bitterness that every 
act of his past life wall be questioned as never be- 
fore. He will become a " pervert '' to those whom 
lie was wont to regard as his friends. 

But the ways of the City of God are not the ways 
of the world. The age-long effort to harmonize 
them has always come to naught. He must 
definitely choose between the two. The pleasant 
things that he must leave behind are, after all, but 
of a fleeting and temporary kind, whilst those which 
he will find in the old pathw^ays of the City are the 
kind that endure. 

Upon entering the Eternal City, the soul of the 



CARLTON STRONG 39 1 

pilgrim will rejoice in its escape from the irksome 
tyrannies and conventions of the world outside. He 
is at last free to believe, and it is in the atmosphere 
of this new-born freedom that he soon comes to 
sense for the first time that peace which the world 
cannot give. He finds quiet modest goodness 
everywhere about him, if he will but look for it, 
for here goodness is not '' puffed up," nor self-seek- 
ing. Whatever his station, whether rich or poor, 
learned or unlearned, of good repute or ill repute, 
the weary pilgrim is given a hearty welcome and is 
made a partaker of Gifts that afford him eternal 
consolation. 

in 

The Church of God is likened to an ark or ship, 
because she saves us from the deluge. She is the 
Gate of Heaven, because through her portal all 
who are redeemed must pass, even though they be 
unidentified by her in this life. 

We look about us for a standard or type of her 
people and we find all types. 

We look for an outward and worldly calm and 
we are astonished by the whirr of her activities. 

We are told that she is foreign to our race, yet 
she was the spiritual mother of our forefathers. 

We are told that she speaks in strange tongues, 
yet we find her constantly speaking our own. 

She is charged with ignorance, and we find her 
the mother of learning; with children at the fore 
front of every constructive and progressive effort, 



392 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

in literature, science, art, mechanics, and in every 
field of human endeavor. 

The leaders of the Church are assailed by those 
outside for their love of pomp and glory, yet their 
poorest critic would scarcely trade personal expense 
accounts' with her venerable Head himself. 

The Church is charged by some as being too 
democratic, and, by others, as being too aristo- 
cratic. The truth is, she is bound to be both, be- 
cause Christianity inculcates high and therefore 
aristocratic ideals, of which real democracy is es- 
sentially a fruit. Consideration for one's fellow^s, 
and especially for the weak and dependent, is a 
hall-mark of Christian character and without it 
there can be no democracy. A man is only a Chris- 
tian and a gentleman when he follows and reflects 
the life and character of the Gentle-Man, — the 
Founder of these distinctions. 

It is a common saying that the Church is losing 
ground; that she is out of touch with the spirit of 
the day, that her influence is exerted against prog- 
ress and development. The fact is, her following 
is larger, more loyal and more rapidly growing 
than ever before, and she is almost the only effective 
opponent of the most crying evils of the day. 

It would be a profitless task to attempt to cata- 
logue all of the criticisms that have been and which 
are now aimed at the old Church, but against all of 
them she exhibits a degree of wisdom and prudence 
that is not possessed by any other society of men in 



CARLTON STRONG 393 

the world. This eternal and ever present gift is, 
in itself, a phenomenon of startling significance. 
She has observed, catalogued, digested and sys- 
tematized the wisdom and experience of twenty 
centuries, yet however enriched, her ever living wis- 
dom is superior to any systematized effort that she 
may have made in the past, or to the mere intellec- 
tual attainments of her leaders in any crisis; for 
these are often over-ruled and saved from them- 
selves by an Everliving Leader, " who, watching 
over Israel, slumbers not nor sleeps." 

And in the hour of trial, the humblest and mean- 
est of her members may have recourse to this inex- 
haustible treasury of wisdom and receive what is 
suited to his needs in any emergency. 

The convert must needs pass through a season of 
readjustment; but what, to himself, will probably be 
the most noticeable change will be in the direction 
of his relationship to his fellow-men. Toward 
them he will come to have and to feel a more com- 
passionate and kindly interest than he did before. 
He will be more inclined to view them in the light 
of their limitatio-ns and talents, and with less re- 
gard to the accidents of birth and fortune. He \Yill 
delight in the goodness and wholesomeness of those ^ 
whom the world classifies as at the bottom. To 
him, many of those will occupy positions at *' the 
top.'' In short, he will come to view the social 
order from an infinitely higher and more Catholic 
plane than he did before. 



394 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

And what, after all, is the best reason for enter- 
ing the Gate, and setting our feet on the path that 
lies beyond the road to Rome? My answer is, and 
only can be, that the best reason is because we have 
seriously come to the conviction that it is the right 
thing to do. There is no other reason that justifies 
the step. With such a reason, no consideration, 
however vital it may seem, should keep us from 
doing so. 



J. SELWIN TAIT, 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 

Bank President; author of National Banks and Government 
Circulation; Our Financial Upheavals: Their Cause and 
Cure; The Relation of Banking Reform to Corporate 
Financing, etc. Author, also, of several works of fic- 
tion. 

My reasons for leaving the faith of my fathers 
and joining the CathoHc Church may be described 
as a growing consciousness of the insufficiency of 
the teachings of the Church of Scotland and, later 
on, of the Episcopal Church, to satisfy my spiritual 
needs, and a conviction that the teachings of the 
older church met those requirements — as I under- 
stood them — much more fully. 

Born in the south of Scotland, where antagonism 
to the Catholic Church was so- marked that stained 
glass windows and instrumental music were 
frowned upon because they were believed to savor 
of the papacy, I absorbed all the native hostility to 
the Catholic Church. Still, even as a boy, I thought 
I perceived in the stern doctrines of John Knox 
an inconsistency with the teachings of the Sermon 
on the Mount. The religious gloom which shad- 
owed our Sabbath days and the dull and lengthy 
services in our churches, bred a spirit akin to re- 

395 



396 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

sentment in my mind with the existing condition 
of things. There were undoubtedly great numbers 
of godly people among our church goers — people 
of high moral character and lofty ideals — but I 
could not understand a religion whose injunctions, 
in actual practice, stopped short at the cardinal vir- 
tues such as the observation of the Lord's Day, 
honesty, etc., and ignored those qualities of abiding 
love and charity — which are the crown and glory 
of Christianity. 

The church of my youth had but little to do with 
the beauties O'f Christianity, but much with the 
rigors we here identify with Puritanism. The 
somber shadows of those Scottish Sabbath days in 
the beautiful valley in which I was born is recalled 
even now with a feeling akin to horror. If I ven- 
tured to raise a humble protest and to inquire why 
we did not have more brightness in our churches, 
and our services, the graves of the Covenanters 
were pointed out to me and I was reminded of the 
attitude taken by my forefathers on religious ques- 
tions, and asked if I wanted those things which 
they had died rather than have. When in my early 
teens a religious Revival occurred in my native 
town and throughout the south of Scotland, then, 
for the first time, religion became to me a living 
actuality and my faith a vital force. At last I had 
cast the husks away and was feasting on the ker- 
nels of life's true nourishment. Then I had to 
leave my native town and go to London — a lad of 



J. SELWIN TAIT 397 

eighteen. Alone in that great city, cut off by dis- 
tance from all my later religious associates, without 
a church to fall back upon which exacted observ- 
ances, and had its claims allowed, it is perhaps not 
to be wondered at that the fire which had begun to 
burn so brightly in my soul, languished and for a 
time threatened to become extinguished altogether. 

Still the flame was not wholly quenched. The 
Episcopal Church of which I had become a member 
appealed more to me than my own church. I liked 
its beautiful service, its exquisite hymns — and 
there was more brightness in it. 

Absence from my native land had given me a 
better viewpoint, and when I thought of the way 
Scottish Protestantism declared itself in my native 
land, I felt a glow of resentment that so beautiful 
a religion as the faith of Christ should have been 
so darkly interpreted in that lovely Scottish valley. 
As I studied the history of my country more closely, 
it seemed to me that in driving out the Catholic re- 
ligion all the brightness and gayety of the Scottish 
Border had gone with it. 

About this time a dear relative passed away. 
With this — my first great loss — I went on my 
knees in sorrow and despair to pray for the dead. 
My church, however, forbade it — " as the tree 
falls so must it lie," was not actually said, but it was 
inferred very clearly and in a very final and con- 
clusive fashion. 

Hot in revolt, one lovely summer evening in a 



398 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

suburb of London, I called upon a Catholic priest 
and told him of my desire to enter his church, where 
I felt I could at least pray for the repose of the 
soul of the loved one who had passed away. We 
knelt in prayer and his utterances seemed to me to 
be only of Holy Church and the Blessed Virgin 
Mary. Looking back upon that time I think that 
priest was ill qualified to win converts to Catholi- 
cism. Had he taken the trouble to inquire as to 
the place and manner of my bringing up, he would 
have discovered that my whole religious training 
was violently opposed to that line of thought. 
'' There is one mediator between God and Man — 
the man Christ Jesus," had been the article of my 
faith that above all others I had clasped to my so'ul 
with hooks of steel. It was the inalienable fran- 
chise of my soul, this right of direct approach to 
the Throne of Grace in the name of Christ and in 
appearing to substitute the Creature for the Creator 
he shocked me beyond measure. In later years I 
comprehended how terribly I had misunderstood 
him, and I learned the priceless value of the minis- 
trations that my mind then refused to- acknowl- 
edge. 

I rose from my knees hot and despairing and I 
never went back to him. All unconsciously he 
had discouraged me as absolutely as if he had taken 
me by the shoulders, and put me out of the build- 
ing. If he had dealt gently with my prejudices 
and had been only half as tactful as all the other 



J. SELWIN TAIT 399 

priests I have met since have been, I would have 
joined the church then. As it was he pushed me 
away from the church — just thirty years. 

After that long interval of time had passed w^ith 
all its joys and sorrows and heart breaking bereave- 
ments once more I approached the Catholic Church. 
Why? Well, because the old feeling had come 
back — -perhaps it had never wholly gone away — 
and I was still unsatisfied. I found I did not go 
to church at all unless I expected to hear an es- 
pecially good sermon or fine music. The fact is 
I went to be entertained. Then I had become very 
intimately acquainted with certain Jesuit priests, 
whose sole purpose in life seemed to- be to spend 
and be spent in the Master's service. Such total 
self-surrender, such unfailing steadfastness, such 
devotion to their great work I had never imagined 
possible. 

The leaven was working gradually. Now and 
again I dropped into Catholic Churches and saw 
with growing amazement large edifices full of peo- 
ple intensely occupied with their own devotions. 
The fact that there was no fine singing (that is, in 
the churches I went to; of course, there is some ex- 
ceedingly fine music in some of the Catholic 
Churches), no long, eloquent sermons as the cen- 
tral and great attraction, made no difference what- 
ever. Service after service — from five o'clock in 
the morning until eleven on Sundays — saw the 
pews filled with all sorts and conditions of people in- 



400 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

tensely engaged in their own prayers and entirely 
oblivious to their surroundings. Such intensity of 
worship I had never seen. First I was startled by 
it, then profoundly impressed. In fact, no single 
feature in the Church affected me more than this. 

Then I noticed that at the bed of death, where 
the Protestant clergyman relaxes his hold on the 
dying man as one who bids a parting friend fare- 
well and says '^ I am sorry I cannot accompany you 
further'' — that it is at this point that the priest 
takes his stand by the side of the dying man, cheers 
him through the dark valley of the Shadow and 
by his divine privilege receives his last confession 
and places a shriven soul in the arms of its Saviour. 

This seemed to me what I wanted: a religion to 
meet all the troubles and trials — and no less the 
prosperities — of life, and to conduct me at last 
through the dark Valley of the Shadow of Death. 
It was the one religion of a man's daily life and his 
great consolation at the end when all earthly help 
failed. 

As the years went on I was honored with the 
friendship of that very great and good Christian 
prelate. Archbishop Diomede Falconio, at that time 
Papal Delegate to the United States, and now 
Cardinal at Rome. Although my inclination once 
more was to join the Catholic Church, there is no 
doubt that it was due to his faithful ministrations 
that I finally decided to leave my ovm church and 
join his. On looking back upon that period I can 



J. SELWIN TAIT 401 

see that I still bristled with sensitiveness and preju- 
dice and it must have taken a world of patience 
and kindly tact to satisfy my scruples. I owe to 
His Eminence a life-long debt of gratitude for his 
great patience with me. 

All that I saw in the Church as I trod my road 
to Rome, I have found since I reached the path 
beyond, for that memorable step once taken has 
never been regretted. On the contrary, I find that 
life has assumed a different aspect since the change. 
The daily Mass nourishes and sustains my soul in 
every relation of life and keeps me in touch not only 
with the Infinite but with that tremendous sacrifice 
which rescues us from the burden of eternal woe, 
and no less from the burdens of our daily lives. 

The gloom inseparable from the religion of my 
youthful years has fled away and been replaced by 
a sense of comfort and peace, which deepens with 
age and will, I am well assured, endure the final test 
triumphantly. 



THOMAS PAYNE THOMPSON, 

NEW ORLEANS, LA. 

Banker; author of Louisiana Writers; Guide to the French 
Quarter of New Orleans; Vice-President, Marquette As- 
sociation ; President and Director of numerous Com- 
panies, Associations and Charities of Louisiana. 

The matter of how it feels to be a Catholic by 
the mature individual who deliberately becomes one 
from conviction, is to me after twenty-five years of 
communion with the Church of Rome, rather a 
difficult question to answer. I am almost as one 
who does not remember ever being anything else. 
Having elected m)^elf into this environment after 
due consideration, and now having fitted myself 
by habit intO' it, I am to-day grooved to the com- 
placency of an inheritor of the faith, and do not 
feel that any apology or explanation could be given, 
if necessary. The exposition of a post-convert ex- 
perience humanly told might partake of an apology 
or an arrogancy. Not desiring to enter either class, 
but with a willingness to say a few words to en- 
courage any faint heart that may be hesitating at 
the gate, my first comment would be : " Walk right 
in, I have found the * road beyond ' most excel- 
lent " ; for, once inside and familiar with the en- 
vironment, — all is well; there comes serenity and 

402 



THOMAS PAYNE THOMPSON 403 

quietude, a feeling of brotherhood and charity to- 
ward all the world. 

The Catholicity of the Church begets this certainty 
and peace; you feel and know that no matter where 
you may roam you will find in all climes and lan- 
guages, under the sign of the cross, a familiar 
church, and at its altar a sympathetic priest offer- 
ing the self same Sacrifice; and with the same Latin 
prayer book that you used around the corner, you 
may follow him. You may commune and feel that 
there in God's House you are not a stranger among 
strangers. 

The literature of the church is intensely satis- 
factory to those inclined to read. 

Its history is most fascinating to the student O'f 
the past. 

Its art appeals to lovers of statuary and painting. 

Everything about its devotion and worship is of 
significance, and is attuned to the better part of our 
nature. Hence the convert who comes into the fold 
of so noble and ancient an institution, is given at 
once continuous spiritual occupation and interest. 

The lure of the many devotions of the Church 
ranges from the simplest service to the pomp and 
pageantry of great festivals. Every variety of 
viand is being offered, and all appetites unceasingly 
satisfied. 

At first the convert may not understand or be 
entirely in sympathy with all that happens about 
him, the essentials are there, however, and after a 



404 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

time these devotions, which originally seemed 
strange, and many of them bizarre, become clear 
to his comprehension, and he is soon quite willing 
that the humble devotee should kiss the polished 
toe of a bronze St. Peter, — even if he be not 
tempted to do the same, and if another desire to 
pray before a doll-dressed Infant Jesus of Prague, 
he feels it is all right. He quickly learns that the 
essential parts of the faith are being participated 
in by every Catholic, whether he be a peasant or 
the Duke of Norfolk; the convert who at first balks 
and shies at many new and unfamiliar sights, some 
of which his unused eyes do not approve, — later 
subscribes to it all, with increased familiarity and 
a full appreciation of his Church's Catholicity ; — 
its way of reaching into all degrees of intelligence; 
and keeping alive there the glow of faith. I say 
then that when the convert has been with his 
Church long enough tO' appreciate its efficiency in 
adapting itself to all environment, — being Mexican 
in Mexico, Irish in Ireland, and Catholic every- 
where and throughout the world, he then begins to 
see and understand the unfolding of a marvellous 
organization, the mechanism of which proves as- 
tounding in its completeness. 

The one time Protestant feels that in this great 
Church are included nearly all of the segregated 
bodies that separately called themselves Baptists, 
Methodists, Episcopalians, etc., and excluded are 



THOMAS PAYNE THOMPSON 405 

all pseudo-beliefs which do not bend to the majesty 
of God, and to the divinity of His Son. 

What at first he has looked upon as superstition, 
he comes to recognize as a garment that encloses 
the real germ of faith in a simple limited so'ul, — a 
lowly saint, maybe. 

The love of form, mysticism, and the supernat- 
ural, all have a part in the practice of a Catholic, 
and as the convert becomes steeped in a deeper 
knowledge of his faith, he is quite willing to sub- 
scribe to- all that he may find in it, and even if he 
may not indulge in every devotion he has great re- 
spect for all the others who do partake, each to his 
comprehension. 

The best thing I have attained, I think, in becom- 
ing a Catholic is the knowledge that I need never 
go further in search of a religion. 

Almost every protesting faith has some part of 
the truth ; the Protestant sects are ever restless, and 
are always inquiring further, — and comparing. If 
" half a truth is worse than a lie," is it not a great 
thing to have so large a truth that it includes all 
that is good in faith and fact: all, in one splendid 
satisfying religion, — the Catholic? 



JUSTINE BAYARD WARD 

NEW YORK, N. Y. 

Wife of the Hon. George Cabot Ward, sometime Secretary 
of State and Vice-Governor of Porto Rico. Author of 
Reform in Church Music; contributor to the Atlantic 
Monthly and the Messenger. 

I have been asked for a few of my impressions 
of the CathoHc Church since having entered it some 
nine years ago, and I will put down a few notes 
without any attempt at orderly sequence. 

Before becoming a Catholic, the exterior unity of 
the Church is what strikes the convert. After a few 
years of experience as a Catholic the exterior unity 
becomes valuable — not only in itself — but as a 
figure of the interior unity which the Catholic 
Church alone supplies. The whole interior life is 
ordered and at peace ; not with the peace of inactivity 
and passive acceptance, as is so often supposed by 
those who judge by the shell, but the peace of or- 
dered activity of mind and heart that springs from a 
common source and motive power; that allows no 
deep disquiet to take root in the soul; permitting 
storms to ruffle the surface but never to penetrate 
to the interior of the soul. 

Becoming a Catholic changes the whole of life. 
Everything is seen in fresh perspective, with new; 

406 



JUSTINE BAYARD WARD 407 

and startling relation to oneself and others. This 
has been my experience. Some things lose their im- 
portance, others become the centre of the picture, 
but the striking sensation is that of finding all things 
in life taking on a sudden, an intimate connection 
with everything else; of each thing falling gradu- 
ally into its place, held together by a spiritual princi- 
ple of gravitation. The puzzles that agitated the 
heart before as to the reasons for things, the appar- 
ent inequalities and injustices of life, the meaning of 
sorrow and of physical pain — all these things, with 
many more, suddenly fall into place. 

One becomes conscious of a new motive power: 
love. Before, the love of Christ was, and in a sense 
could only be, the cold impersonal admiration, or 
enthusiasm, that one feels for a historical character, 
a person known through a book. After coming into 
close personal contact with Christ, day by day 
through the Sacraments, He is known and loved as 
an intimate friend. 

A difference which has struck me perhaps more 
forcibly than any other is the contrast betvv^een the 
Protestant attitude and the Catholic toward sin. 
In general the Protestant attitude is that a good 
person will not be tempted to commit serious sins. 
The Catholic attitude is that all are tempted; there- 
fore watch and pray; if you stand beware lest you 
fall. If you fall, there is a remedy — so rise up 
quickly. The Protestant attitude tends to foster 
hypocrisy; if you commit a sin you must hide it. 



4o8 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

The Catholic attitude fosters humiUty; admit the 
sin and try to do better. 

The institution of the Sacrament of Penance is 
in itself an admission that we are all sinners. It is 
humiliating. It teaches us to know ourselves as is 
possible in no other w^ay. It teaches us to have very 
little faith in our own strength as we watch, week 
by week, the startling divergence between resolu- 
tion and accomplishment. We learn that without 
the life giving power oif the Sacraments we could 
do nothing and less than nothing. 

The mere fact of admitting a sin in words makes 
an impression that no- amount of private repentance 
could do. Moreover, the psychological effect of 
starting fresh — forgiven — with a clean slate, saves 
us from despondency and despair. When, to the 
psychological effect of believing this true, we add 
the actual effect of its being in fact no delusion, that 
the sinning soul is achiaUy made clean by the power 
of Him who healed the lepers, then it will be seen — 
or rather it cannot be so much as conceived by one 
who has not experienced the effect, — what a weight 
IS lifted from a crushed soul, w^hat power is infused 
by contact with this sacrament. 

As Catholics, we are not only taught to use these 
Sacraments toi stimulate growth. We are also care- 
fully trained in the religious life, in spiritual under- 
standing. The soul is not left to grow as a weed, 
but is led, guided, supported, educated, in general 
through the ordinary activities of the Church in re- 



JUSTINE BAYARD WARD 409 

gard to her children, and in particular through re- 
treats and through the confessional. The person- 
ality of a soul is recognized and treated as wisely 
as an able physician of the body deals with the 
physical characteristics of a patient. Thus a sane 
and sound mysticism is possible and is not at all an 
exception; real spiritual experiences are distin- 
guished from false ones and the danger of self de- 
ception is minimized. 

Perhaps the most striking impression of all is 
the power of the Catholic religion in the crises of 
life. Where other religions fail because they offer 
mere words, the Catholic Church succeeds because 
it infuses power. Words, even of the highest wis- 
dom may or may not kindle a response or illumine 
an obscurity. To infuse power is something en- 
tirely different. It needs no words, and if words 
accompany the action it is the action and not the 
words alone which produce the result, which act 
when the heart is too' sad or the spirit too crushed 
or the body too weak to grasp the meaning of words, 
Christ comes and touches with His life-giving per- 
sonal contact. 

I do not think that an)rwhere else the same em- 
phasis is given to the value of simplicity. It is often 
very surprising to one who has grasped the Catholic 
ideal to receive non-Catholic commiseration because 
this or that priest may not possess all the mental 
complexities which to their minds is associated with 
" culture." We have realized that a direct and cer- 



4IO BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

tain grasp of supernatural principles is more apt to 
live in a mind which is either naturally free or has 
freed itself forcibly from complexities in its. out- 
look upon spiritual truth. The great Saints have 
all been either simple by nature or simple by acquisi- 
tion; the complex among them having worked 
around the entire cycle of complexities and found at 
last the one simple and complete truth : the Word of 
God. The ^Mystics were absolutely single. Con- 
tact between mind and mind, moreover, does not de- 
pend on those things which are often called " cul- 
ture,'' but on possessing firmly certain fundamental 
things in common. 

AA'hen I entered the Church it was not through 
any feeling of attraction, but through a forcible 
overcoming of a deep seated aversion. Indeed it 
was only the conviction that I could no longer be a 
sincere person and remain outside the Catholic 
Church which forced me to enter. There has been 
no Catholic practice that I have not approached with 
dislike, and later learned to love, as the prejudices 
which arose from a supernatural knowledge, melted 
away before a deeper understanding. 

The sensation which has grown with the years has 
been that of having stepped out into the open, and 
of having found at last LIFE, — nourished, bal- 
anced, adjusted, poised in relation to God and there- 
fore poised, as it were, by reflection, in its relation 
to the world. One felt oneself in focus, for the 
first time. 



JUSTINE BAYARD WARD 411 

For the first time, one felt free. One dared to 
look as far as the eye could see — unafraid. The 
whole great organism planned by God for 
the human race could bear investigation. The 
old half faced fears lest a gaze too direct into the 
foundations of faith might show up the whole struc- 
ture as unsound, had vanished. Moreover, the 
solidity of the foundation has meant a rapid, free ex- 
pansion of the superstructure. 

To become a Catholic does not mean restriction 
in any sense. It means, as I have already said, life, 
'' He led me forth into a Large Place " has been 
literally true in my case. In the nine years that it 
has been my privilege to stand in the '' large place " 
I have never felt the boundaries restrictive. I have 
never found the Church standing for restriction of 
sound growth or of true liberty. Where her re- 
straining touch is felt — in the rare cases when it is 
felt at all — is precisely where growth would entail 
weakness, a scattering of energy; where exposure 
would mean disease; where unchecked development 
of the poisonous weeds of character would eventu- 
ally choke the normal growth of the whole person. 
This is not what is commonly meant by restriction, 
however. It is, I take it, what we mean by educa- 
tion. 

In moments like the present, when we are look- 
ing at many of the old problems with fresh eyes, 
when we have the courage to face frankly the rising 
flood of moral scourges that threatens to engulf our 



412 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

country, when we find ourselves opposing them so 
often with still more dangerous ''cure-alls" — the 
patent medicines of our civilization; when unsound 
catch-words and misdirected enthusiasms fill our 
eyes with their dust and our ears with their clatter ; 
at such times we turn with unspeakable relief to the 
scientifically planned little Ark, which, though 
fiercely assaulted, sails serenely upon the muddy wa- 
ters. It is comforting to know that our compass 
is in working order; it gives us confidence to feel, 
from time to time, the force of the rudder and the 
jerk of its stout readjusting pull. 



THE MARQUISE CECILE DE WENT- 
WORTH, 

PARIS, FRANCE. 

Pupil of Edouard Detaille. Received medals at Paris Salon, 
Lyons, Turin. First gold medal at Tours. At Exposition 
Universelle, medal on portrait of Leo XIII. Decorated 
by the French Government; Officier de I'Academie; Offi- 
cier de ITnstruction Publique; Chevalier de la Legion 
d^Honneur, 1901. Decorated by Leo XIII, Grand Com- 
mander of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, at Rome. 

Why I became a Catholic has been so often an- 
swered, that it is well to suggest another question: 
Why I reman a Catholic — why I have continued 
'' Beyond the Road to Rome " ? 

My transition from Protestantism to the one 
Holy Church was much like that of others. Years 
have since passed, but the peace, and happiness 
which came with my conversion have not decreased, 
the more I have seen and known of Holy Church, 
the greater has been my appreciation of the grace 
bestowed upon me, the blessing it has been to me. 

I have lived much in convents, and have seen 
the inside home life of the Sisters, whose vocations 
have called them to consecrate themselves in a spe- 
cial manner to the service of God. In these re- 

413 



414 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

ligious houses I have found true piety, devotion to 
the poor and sick, and to the education of the poor. 
For these works of charity the Nuns make a wilHng, 
cheerful sacrifice of self for the good of others. 

I have not found that the Sisters have adopted 
the convent life, because of disappointments in the 
world, as so many Protestants believe. Some of 
them had wealth, titles, beauty, position, and every- 
thing attractive to retain them in the world; but 
influenced by the purest, highest motives they re- 
linquished all, and entered the religious life, and 
there they are contented, cheerful and happy in 
doing their works of charity for the love of God. 

A great part of my artistic life has been devoted 
to painting religious subjects; the Sisters have posed 
for me for many pictures, representing them at their 
devotions, at wo^rk for the poor, in the garden at 
the time of recreation, and other scenes of convent 
life. One of them, an important picture, was placed 
in the Museum of the Luxembourg by the French 
government. It represents the penitent, dying 
Magdalene, with the Sisters ministering to her and 
soothing her last moments. 

I have known many priests, bishops, and cardi- 
nals. Quite a number have at times shared the hos- 
pitality of my home. I have ever found them sin- 
cere, honest, and devoted to their high mission ; sim- 
ple and unassuming in their manners, regarding 
themselves as the humble instruments, the human 
agents, called by a special grace and vocation, to 



THE MARQUISE CECILE DE WENTWORTH 415 

carry om the work that is to continue until the end 
of time. 

The journey Beyond the Road to Rome is a 
much more peaceful one than the one leading to it. 
All doubts and uncertainties are gone, all questions 
solved. All the spiritual desires of the soul are 
satisfied and the heart is full of gratitude for the 
gift of faith, the light of truth. 



JOHN W. WILLIS, A.B., A.M., 

ST. PAUL, MINN. 

Jurist; has served as Attorney-General of ^Minnesota, and in 
numerous other public and private capacities ; con- 
tributor to the Catholic Encyclopaedia. 

St. Paul, ^Iixn., Aug. i8, 19 13. 
My Dear Miss Curtis: 

I entered the Church on Christmas day, 1884, 
and every moment of the time since that day has 
given me new inspiration, a new and lofty concep- 
tion of Divine Revelation and grander conceptions 
of the universe and its Creator. I think that the 
best way for me to ser^^e you is to send, herewith, 
copies of two letters which you may incorporate 
into your work. . . . 

Sincerely, 

John W. Willis. 

Dear Judge Willis: 

1 received the papers you very kindly sent me this 
morning. . . . You must think me vtry negligent 
in acknowledging the Rosary and Catholic papers. 
I appreciate the attention you have shown me, al- 
though my ideas on the subject remain unchanged. 

416 



JOHN W. WILLIS, A.B., A.M. 417 

To be truthful, the more I look into it, the less it 
appeals to me. . . . 

Affectionately yours. 



Excelsior Springs, Missouri, 

November 28, 181 2. 



My Dear 

I assure you that the receipt of your cordial and 
interesting letter conveyed to me a distinctive pleas- 
ure. . . . None of us will stay here long, and then, 
what? We shall then be fully alive and shall exist 
forever, but in a new environment. . . . Contem- 
plating an eternal existence and realizing that a 
Creator who has planned its manifold beauties and 
advantages must be, in Himself, all that should in- 
spire love and reverence, every true Christian feels 
irresistibly impelled to conform with the Will and 
glorious Purpose of the Creator. . . . He has not 
made two or more revelations, but, simply, one. 
That revelation, intended as the supreme guide of 
mankind and womankind, has been made through 
the work of the seer and prophet, through the work 
of divinely inspired record-makers and, lastly, by 
the Creator, Himself, who, descending to this very 
world of ours, merged Himself into a human form, 
at the same time assuming the earthly title, Christ, 
the Anointed. He founded a society to perpetuate 
His Incarnation and His work. He called that so- 
ciety " The Church.'' Exercising a power and au- 



4l8 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

thority which feeble humanity can neither deny nor 
withstand, He declared that The Church was to be 
His Body and that He was the Head of that body, 
that The Church was a living body and that The 
Church would never fail. 

Now, unless we are blasphemous and assert that 
Christ's word has failed, then W'e must admit that 
He has been present with His Church at ever\^ mo- 
ment since the day of His crucifixion and is still 
present with that great, that incomparable society. 
The incarnate Creator founded only one Church. 
He founded only one system of teaching. He 
founded only one Philosophy. 

There is only one institution that existed among 
the people of our race — the Caucasian — at the 
commencement of the Christian Era, that still exists. 
There is no merely human government, no system 
of human law, no corporation that existed in* the 
days of Caesar Augustus that has not since per- 
ished. 

Without a break in her continuity, The Church 
has remained intact from the hour of Christ's As- 
cension until the present hour. Her course began 
among the hills and valleys of Palestine. The 
Apostles — Peter at their head — transferred her 
central seat of teaching and authority to the City 
of Rome and there it still remains, august, serene, 
imperishable. The Church preserved all the learn- 
ing, all the civilization, and all the art of classic 
times when barbarism overwhelmed Europe. She 



JOHN W. WILLIS, A.B., A.M. 419 

converted the barbarians to the Faith of Christ. 
She founded all the great universities of the East- 
ern Hemisphere. She covered all the countries of 
Europe with stately and beautiful structures which 
are still, and ever shall be, the models for architects 
and builders. Under her inspiration, Art glorified 
Europe and the light reflected therefrom sheds its 
radiance over America. 

Maintaining unflinchingly what Holy Scripture 
calls " The Faith once delivered to the Saints," she 
has survived many and various hostile assaults and 
her adherents constitute a majority of all professing 
Christians. 

Even though we should have the hardihood to 
minimize the force of Christ's sayings, " There shall 
be One Fold and One Shepherd " and " Lo', I am 
with you all days even untO' the consummation of 
the world," yet we can scarcely assume that the 
vast majority of Christians are in error or that 
any one of the different sects among the minority 
carries the banner and wields the authority of the 
One True God. The probability is that the ma- 
jority, especially as its organization has extended, 
without break, from the days of the Apostles to the 
present time, is absolutely right. Providence can- 
not justly be said to have permitted the majority to 
go astray; and point is lent to- this proposition by 
the inability of the minority — the non-Catholics — 
to agree among themselves. 

The society which has preserved, in marvellous 



420 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

manner, its world-wide organization, amid the 
wreck and disappearance of all other organizations, 
which still lives and possesses an ever-increasing vi- 
tality, is The Holy Catholic Church, often called 
The Roman Catholic Church. This latter name has 
deep significance. Its meaning is that The Church 
is '' Roman as to the centre and Catholic (universal 
or all-embracing) as to circumference." 

The Catholic Church may not appeal to all. To 
some art is meaningless, poetry uninteresting. 
Some persons are unresponsive to the dramas of 
Shakespeare, to the poems of Dante and Milton. 
To many the beauties of nature are never revealed. 
To quote Wordsworth: 

"A primrose by the river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him 
And it was nothing more.'' 

I was, once upon a time, outside The One True 
Fold. I was a non-Catholic. Divine Providence 
led me to search the Holy Scriptures and in prayer 
and meditation upon life here and life eternal to 
seek the Truth. My prayers were answered. I 
was led out of darkness by the " Kindly Light." 
Now that I stand under the sun-lit dome of Divine 
Truth, I am conscious of breathing a new and vital 
air spiritual, conscious of a larger hope, of the com- 
ing of everlasting peace. 

This is the reason for trying, in my humble way, 
to direct your attention to the faith which, happily 



JOHN W. WILLIS, A.B., A.M. 42 1 

for him, is the faith to which adheres 

and upon which he, his foster-mother and I base 
our hopes of eternal salvation. 

With assurances of regard, I have the honor to 
remain, 

Sincerely, 

John W. Willis. 



ROBERT FRAXXIS WILSON, 

RAXELAGH, DUBLIN, IRELAND. 

From the City of the Seven Hills the vistas are 
many, and most are fair beyond all human word or 
thought, for are they not closed by flashing glimpses 
of the glory of the heavenly Kingdom? But there 
is one avenue barred to the true convert. It is that 
road which leads away from Rome back into the 
quagmires of Protestantism and Agnosticism over 
which still hang the mist and chilling fog from 
which he emerged into the light and heat that flood 
the holy places on the hills. It is literally true that 
in the cases of all the converts I have intimately 
known a shudder of real horror would pass over 
them at the very thought of abandoning the City 
of Peace for that which was once their home. For 
myself I can only say that, travelling much, and 
alone, it would, at least a dozen times in my life, 
have been quite easy to have reverted to Anglican- 
ism had I the slightest misgiving as to the wisdom 
or rightness of the step I had taken when I became 
a Catholic. So much for the idea that one may be 
disillusioned with Catholicism but may not have the 
moral courage to break away. But a non-Catholic 
friend may say that this is only speaking in general 



ROBERT FRANCIS WILSON 423 

terms, and after all, it would really help him more 
to tell him what I found in Catholicism which makes 
it impossible that I should ever regret having em- 
braced it. A certain amount of egotism is inevita- 
ble in these papers and it will be forgiven if I state 
at the outset that I have lived in many countries, 
and under varying conditions, have mixed with men 
of all classes, of almost all nationalities, and of all 
shades of religious belief, and this may give me a 
right to be heard to which otherwise I would have 
no claim. 

Upon becoming a Catholic the first thing which 
struck me was the extraordinary sense of intellec- 
tual freedom which the change gave me. My whole 
mental horizon became widened, and many events 
of history and movements of human thought had 
a light thrown upon them which revealed a purpose 
and relation hitherto unnoticed. In a word, they 
got an explanation. A certain mental bigotry or 
obscurantism entirely disappeared. In Protestant- 
ism one seemed like a child who had been taught by 
some mischievous imp that two and two made five, 
and whose poor little head was therefore perpetu- 
ally worried because its sums came out wrong. In 
Catholicism one is taught that two and two make 
four, and therefore the sums come out right. This 
may help to explain the intellectual freedom. In 
Anglicanism one was continually held up in most in- 
teresting discussions because it was instinctively 
felt by every one present that if conducted on the 



424 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

same lines they must, by an inevitable logic, lead to 
the adoption of the Roman position. Even when 
this was not the case, how often have we known, 
when conversing about religious subjects, or even 
reading about them, that the Catholic view of the 
matter w^as absolutely ignored. I appeal to any 
Protestant or High Church Anglican reader to ask 
himself how often at Bible Classes, for instance, 
he has known the discussion to be cleverly headed 
off, or shall we say '' side tracked," because it was 
running on Roman lines. Well, how can truth be 
arrived at by such methods? In Catholic sem- 
inaries anything and everything is discussed. In 
fact, in certain methods of dispute practiced every 
working day of the year it is the bounden duty of 
the student deputed as opponent to bring forward 
every objection he can think of to the thesis stated 
by the opener. And it does not matter whether the 
argument is Protestant or Agnostic, it must be pro- 
pounded and refuted. Surely this is how truth is 
really defended. Hence, again, the intellectual 
freedom of Catholics. 

Then in literature and art I found among High 
Church Anglicans an incredible narrowmess. It 
was considered not quite proper to read anything 
not written by '' Catholics." Even Browning and 
Tennyson were not cultivated as much as they might 
be, as they were not " Catholics." I remember that 
it came upon me as somewhat of a shock to find 
that a poem of Milton's found a place in the curric- 



ROBERT FRANCIS WILSON 425 

ulum of a Catholic College. Of course, as a Cath- 
olic, I saw that if a boy was allowed to study Homer, 
Virgil, Plato, Cicero, Sophocles and other Classical 
Pagan writers, there was certainly no reason what- 
ever why he should not study Milton. For, un- 
orthodox though he may have been, at least Milton 
was nearer Christianity than Homer or Virgil. The 
same great contrast was observable in the study of 
history and philosophy, but I have already empha- 
sized the point sufficiently and pass to the second 
phenomenon of Catholic life which struck me as 
soon as I came intoi contact with it. It was how 
entirely Catholic priests were unlike the Protestant 
idea and description of them. I was taught to think 
them crafty, designing, underhanded, hypocritical. 
Instead of this I found them the most unaffected 
class of men in the world. I found them natural, 
free, open and hearty in their manner, and true in 
every relation of life. In all my experience I think 
I only met one priest whom I could describe as 
morose, and he was in ill health. In the pulpit it 
was the same. They spoke in a natural tone, not 
with that " pulpit voice " so much affected by Rit- 
ualistic clergymen. Why this openness and sin- 
cerity oif manner in crafty, designing men? One 
or two might deceive one for a time, but not the 
hundreds one met in different countries and lived 
with long enough to know intimately. Surely no 
man who thinks seriously at all can resist the obvi- 
ous conclusion that Catholic priests are sincere, 



426 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

open, honest, frank because they are Catholic priests, 
and for no other reason. This point brings me to 
another in connection with the priesthood. I found 
no people really less " priest-ridden " than Catholics. 
In fact, the use of the word is one of the things 
which invariably raises a smile at Catholic gather- 
ings. The intercourse of a Catholic with a priest 
is far more frank and open than that between the 
member of any Protestant body and his minister, 
and this is true of the humblest peasant as well as 
of the proudest king. Have we not known, too, in 
Ireland how the merry gathering might jest with 
*' Father Tom " or '' Father Pat," and yet, when it 
came to a matter of his sacerdotal dignity or func- 
tion how his sacred office was at once recognized 
and his person enshrined from any suspicion of dis- 
respect. 

Then to pass from priest to people. If it is asked, 
plainly and straightly, — After all, if Catholics are 
no better than other people, what good is their re- 
ligion? Have you found them better? I answer 
with equal plainness, — Yes. It is a favorite trick 
with Protestant controversialists to contrast the 
evil lives of certain classes of nominal Catholics 
with respectable members of their own body. But 
a little examination shows the unfairness of this. 
Comparing class for class in the different popula- 
tions, I have found Catholics invariably the better 
people. Perhaps more than anything else in the 
lives of Catholics what struck me was their patience 



ROBERT FRANCIS WILSON 427 

and submission in grief and trial. Their absolute 
resignation to the Divine Will under the severest 
strain, as contrasted with the petulance, willfulness 
and rebellion, in some cases almost amounting to 
blasphemy, of those outside the fold, could not but 
convince one of the entire reality of their faith in 
Divine Providence. This was true especially of the 
poorer classes. But another and very important 
matter to which I must bear most emphatic testi- 
mony is this. Among non-Catholic young men, 
whether brought up as members of the Church of 
England, or as Agnostics, there is little or no sense, 
now-a-days, of personal purity. This is true of the 
very highest classes as well as of the lowest. Even 
among well-bred, high-born young Englishmen sins 
against chastity are condoned easily and indeed 
taken as a matter of course. But among Catholic 
young men of similar rank in society this is not so. 
Though the experience of the latter in life may have 
placed them in similar circumstances to their non- 
Catholic companions, yet their view of the heinous- 
ness of this particular sin was entirely different. 
And so one has found that an accusation which a 
young Irish gentleman, for instance, would regard 
as a mortal offense, a young Englishman would 
look upon almost as a compliment. This is very 
plain, hard speaking, but I must repeat that I write 
with a good deal of experience obtained from travel 
and actual contact with facts. 
, So far indeed what I have said has been about 



428 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

others — my fellow-Catholics. But again an An- 
glican friend may ask : What has Catholicism done 
for yourself personally which makes it so entirely 
impossible that you should ever abandon it? Of 
course a full answer to such a question might be 
thought too intimate for such a paper as this. But 
at least the outlines may be given. First, then, 
Catholicism encourages reality in the individual. 
If there is one vice from which Catholicism is more 
free than any other religious system it is the vice 
of hypocrisy. Be real, be yourself, do not pretend 
or pose, this is the lesson. The confessional almost 
inevitably brings this about. You must be in 
earnest, you must be true there or you get no ab- 
solution. From this fact arises sometimes a strange 
result. Faults are discovered in converts which 
were unsuspected before, or may we not rather say 
conventions are disregarded by them which were 
observed before? So much of the religion of Prot- 
estantism consists in respectability that the true mo- 
tives of conduct are lost sight of altogether. The 
supreme question as to whether an action is right 
or wrong in itself is not considered. And so it 
happens with many Protestants that acts refrained 
from in public are done furtively, with a decided 
ultimate weakening of the moral stamina. 

Then what sincere convert has not found very 
quickly how a searching, purifying process begins 
in his life. The weak points are discovered one by 
one. The first real hour o^f prayer, the first well- 



ROBERT FRANCIS WILSON 429 

made meditation show one something of one's own 
meanness and most ignoble failing. The fight may 
be long and bitter, the failures may be many, but as 
he responds to grace and makes use of the Sacra- 
ments, the character is strengthened until the " meas- 
ure of the stature of the fullness of Christ " is 
reached. 

That scandals arise in the Catholic Church is no 
doubt true, and I cannot deny that more than once 
I have been in '' perils from false brethren." But 
it should be remembered that the Church, like her 
Divine Founder, welcomes all. The worse men are, 
the more they need her care. And as the standard 
which she sets is not that of a mere outward re- 
spectability, but a thorough change of heart, is it 
any wonder that many fail when her test is ap- 
plied ? 

Again it is entirely forgotten by her slanderers 
that she does not reform men by a sort of magic. 
The cooperation of the human will is necessary, and 
that will has a bias towards evil. The wonder, 
indeed, is — not that the Church has failed in this 
or that case, but that she has accomplished so much. 
Almighty God will not force the submission of any 
creature He has made, and we cannot expect His 
Church to do what He will not do. Judged by her 
best products Catholicism is supremely triumphant 
when compared with any Protestant form of faith, 
no matter how closely the Catholic ideals may be 
copied, as in the case of High Church Anglicanism. 



430 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

But the Catholic Church can stand a severer test 
than this, for, in the case of individuals and even 
populations which are semi-Catholic or nominally 
Catholic, there is at least something to work upon 
and some appeal to make. The fair test, of course, 
of any religious system is what it does with those 
who respond most loyally to its teaching. The 
Catholic Church points to her saints and challenges 
the world. 

Before I became a Catholic I had been told that 
Romanism only attracted people of a certain tem- 
perament, that, in fact, the whole thing was a mat- 
ter of temperament. But inside the Church I found 
people of every temperament, and these not only 
among born Catholics but among converts. And 
for the spiritual benefit of these what abundant pro- 
vision was made. For la}'men and women the nu- 
merous sodalities and confraternities, and the Third 
Orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic. Then, 
among the religious orders, what a variety of voca- 
tions were fostered and matured! Yet among all 
this wonderful variety what an even more wonder- 
ful unity; Oratorian, Jesuit, Franciscan, Domin- 
ican, Benedictine, Carthusian, all believing the same 
great doctrines — all acknowledging the one su- 
preme head! In the Catholic Church I found the 
apostolic ideal of a diversity of gifts, but the same 
spirit; I found the great fundamental laws of hu- 
mility and obedience, and upon these the great edi- 
fice of her sanctity was raised. 



ROBERT FRANCIS WILSON 43I 

But more than anything else in the Catholic 
Church which makes it the true home of the human 
soul is the abiding sacramental presence of Our 
Lord. How can tongue or pen describe what this 
means to a Catholic? It is this which makes the 
supreme, the crucial difference between the religious 
systems. How often has one noticed the terrible 
chill and blank that are felt in a non-Catholic church. 
It does not matter how beautiful the interior deco- 
ration of such a building may be, there comes the 
impression, amounting sometimes to a sense of 
physical pain, that some One is absent. 

On the other hand, one may visit a Catholic 
Church which, as far as architecture is concerned, 
may be little better than a whitewashed barn, yet as 
soon as we enter we feel that the Divine Guest is 
there. I had thought that this impression might 
be merely imaginative and confined to converts, but 
I found that born Catholics got exactly the same 
sensation of chill and drear abandonment when vis- 
iting non-Catholic places O'f worship. One is as 
certain of this difference as of that between the day 
and the night, or of that between the caressing 
warmth of Southern climes, and the cold gray of 
a snow-bound winter. How can all this be ex- 
plained by non-Catholics? They can explain it no 
more than they can explain the miracles of Lourdes. 
There is only one explanation and that is the Cath- 
olic one. 

To pursue this matter further. How often be- 



432 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

fore Holy Communion have we felt dry and even 
indevout, and come away strengthened and refreshed 
for the constant battle waged against the world, the 
flesh and the devil. 

And after all is it not fitting that this should be 
the supreme reason for remaining a Catholic? To 
have the high privilege of access to the hidden God, 
to be near Him, to know His Presence and His 
power, these are the things that keep us Catholics. 
One five minutes in the Presence of the Blessed Sac- 
rament, is more to us than all the years of honours 
of Anglicanism or any other non-Catholic system. 
And so we cannot choose but stay. 

To conclude. It has often seemed to me that the 
position of a convert in the Catholic Church is very 
much like that of a child of noble birth stolen by 
gipsies when very young. For a few years they 
keep him and in their own rough way they are kind 
to him, and he responds tO' whatever affection they 
may show him. But all the time his heart is hungry 
for his true mother and his true home. An un- 
erring instinct tells him all is not right. At length 
he is discovered. With great joy he is restored to his 
ancestral house. He wanders through its long corri- 
dors, through its great hall where hang the portraits 
of many heroes of his line. He visits the library 
w^here are thousands of volumes of great age and 
great price, the products of ripened thought and the 
choicest literary art. From room to room he strays, 
and his wonder grows. He finds at last the Chapel 



I 



ROBERT FRANCIS WILSON 433 

where the prayers of the household have ascended 
unbrokenly for centuries, through days of persecu- 
tion and prosperity ahke, and in this shrine of high 
tradition he kneels in humblest gratitude and adora- 
tion. To the other children of the house all these 
things are matters of course and they wonder some- 
times at the enthusiastic zest of his enjoyment. But 
the thought that all these things are his also over- 
powers him while it uplifts. 

So it is with the convert. The years pass and 
the wonder and the beauty grow. No thought can 
exhaust the treasure of the Church's wisdom, no 
demand can find her help unready. Each Mass 
brings its own gift and its own message. At one's 
side in joy and sorrow, in sickness and in health, in 
affluence or poverty, in failure or success, in life and 
in death, day by day, unfailing stands the Church 
that so, " beyond the Road to Rome," the feet of 
the pilgrim may still be set towards the gate of that 
other City, the goal of our desire, and fair beyond 
our dream and hope. 



THE EDITOR. 

Literature, taken in its different aspects, is many 
sided. Collectively it is a great teacher, while ap- 
proached from one side or another it appeals to dif- 
ferent minds. History, philosophy, poetry, fiction, 
the ideal and the realistic, each attracts certain tem- 
peraments, while the tendency, in some cases, is to 
narrow the view, if too much time and attention is 
given to one line of thought to the exclusion of the 
others. Hence the man who from choice, necessity, 
or habit, devotes his pen to one form of literature 
only, is usually supposed to* have no ideas or tastes 
or talents beyond his particular field. 

This is the prologue, or perhaps apology, for the 
statement that I have been accused by non-Catholics 
of being an idealist. It is said that this is sho'wn 
plainly in my writings, and that therefore, as an 
idealist, I view the Church, and the convert's road to 
Rome, through such rose colored spectacles that I 
can see in the convert's life no element of trial, in 
the Church, through her human side, no flaw. 

I shall endeavor in these pages to show that if I 
am an idealist it is not because I do not know the 
seamy side of life, for I do; not because I am not 
well acquainted with the stumbling blocks which 
a convert meets both before and after he becomes 

434 



THE EDITOR 435 

a Catholic, for I know them very well; therefore I 
shall try to enumerate, as far as I am able, what 
the real essential explanation is of these perplexing 
questions that confront the convert in his relations 
to the old and the new. 

The first few weeks of the convert's life after his 
reception, when the heart and soul are full of 
brightness and thanksgiving, has in it something of 
the intoxicating joyousness of the first weeks of a 
happy wedded life. He is past the waiting time, and 
all the difficulties of the way; he rejoices to think 
he is at last a Catholic, and in his soul there is the 
grace of the neophyte. It is very fair — this 
dream city that he has reached. He needs now, 
as all converts need, the Gospel of encouragement; 
he should find it in friends and books and in his 
environment; but no- life, except the life in Heaven, 
will ever be without trial, and to the convert, as he 
progresses on the road beyond, there will surely 
come stumbling blocks and difficulties even in spite 
of his glorious heritage. To meet them and un- 
derstand them and analyze them he needs the clear 
eye of truth joined to an unflinching faith. Happy 
will be the convert who, in this spirit, takes what 
comes to him, for then he can rise triumphant above 
the criticisms of non-Catholic friends, and his own 
individual temptations. 

Perhaps this condition is more strikingly illus- 
trated in the life of the man or woman who has left 



436 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

the Anglican communion to become a Catholic than 
in any other. On his journey along the road to 
Rome the questions he has met with are no greater 
than those enco-untered by converts from other re- 
ligions; but they are far more subtle. If he is a 
High Churchman his friends talk about their church 
services in a way almost identical with the Catholic 
manner of speaking of public worship. When he 
has at last crossed the Rubicon and started on the 
road beyond, he is, as a rule, free from any aggres- 
sive attempts to make him turn back; but the con- 
ditions he now encounters are of a different kind. 
His friends worry if the church he attends is not up 
to the standard of aesthetic good taste that marks 
their own. Every bit of Roman news in the news- 
papers is brought to him to read, and he is asked 
what he thinks of it, especially if the issue as to the 
right or wrong of the matter is in doubt; if he re- 
plies — which is the best answer he can always give 
— that he will wait till he sees w^hat his own church 
papers have to say on the subject, he is looked upon 
as quite Roman crazy, and incapable of forming his 
own opinions. In fact, he is assailed on every side 
with comments and questions about things that are 
absolutely apart from truth. 

And here I strike at the root of the difference be- 
tween Catholic and Anglican belief. In the Life 
of Mother Theodosia Drane, edited by Father Ber- 
tram Wilberforce, she says some remarkable things 
about the difference between the Beautiful and the 



i 



THE EDITOR 437 

True. And the whole question between the Cath- 
oHc church on the one hand, and High Church An- 
gHcanism on the other, rests on that. In this coun- 
try the Episcopal church stands for refinement, cul- 
ture, and the educated class. She has all that at- 
tracts the eye and taste ; joined — among thousands 
of her members — to a religious spirit and sincere 
devotion. 

The Catholic church, on the other hand, is 
crowded with the poor. Her churches, except in 
the large cities, are small and plain (quite often 
without any claim to the beauty of architecture or 
decoration that marks the Catholic churches and 
Cathedrals of Europe, and the English Cathedrals 
that were built in pre^Reformation times). She 
has been struggling to build these churches, usually 
with Httle money — to minister to her rapidly in- 
creasing population — to foster vocations — a cry- 
ing need of the day — and to meet and solve the 
thousand and one questions with which she is con- 
stantly confronted. Many of these things make 
hard conditions, for the convert, unaccustomed to 
the democracy of the Catholic church. 

To ^um up, then, the situation between the Cath- 
olic and the Anglican churches, as it appears to me : 
In the former the faults, or disadvantages, are all 
on the surface, easily seen, and because seen, known 
to have nothing to do with the church's doctrine or 
faith. In the latter, however, the faults are not on 
the surface, they are not visible to the eye or senses, 



438 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

and hence her members rest in a false security and 
peace. It is only when an especial call to which 
they respond, is vouchsafed to them, that they can 
see that the Anglican church is weak in those things 
which have to do ^\'ith the \ery fundamental basis 
on which she stands — in a word, she is heretical and 
schismatical. But this is out of sight for the aver- 
age man, or else he has been taught, and believes, 
an entirely false theory about it. 

In chapter the eighth, page 151, of IMonsignor 
Benson's **' Confessions of a Convert/*' he has some 
reflections on this same subject. He says that 
"judging from an experience of nine years as an 
Anglican clergyman, and eight years as a Catholic 
priest, there are defects in both the Catholic and 
the Anglican communions: that in the case of the 
AngHcan these defects are vital and radical, since 
they are flaws in what ought to be divinely intact — 
flaws, that is to say, in such things as the certitude 
of faith, the unity of believers, and the authority 
of those who should be teachers in the name of God ; 
and that in the case of the Catholic church the flaws 
are merely those of flawed htrmanity, inseparable 
from the state of imperfection in which all men 
are placed. The flaws of Anglicanism, and indeed 
in Protestantism generally, are evidences that the 
system is not divine : the flaws in the Catholic sys- 
tem show no more than that it has a human side as 
well as a divine, and this no Catholic has ever 
dreamed of denying.'' 



THE EDITOR 439 

To the convert, who looks on with unbiased vi- 
sion, the meaning of it all is clear. Therefore let 
him not be disturbed if his Anglican friends ask him 
useless questions, as some one once asked me, with a 
pitying smile, how I liked a poor little representation 
of the Grotto of Lourdes, in my parish church ; for 
such questions are beside the way. 

If our churches are often poor, at least we never 
do the queer things that are done in some Anglican 
places of worship. Let me explain. 

In 191 1, during a trip to Europe, I came to Can- 
terbury, and the first thing I did was to visit its 
glorious cathedral. This building, with its Cath- 
olic memories of the martyred St. Thomas a Becket, 
of St. Anselm, the Black Prince, Prior Henry d'Es- 
tria. Cardinals Bradwardine and Pole, the saintly 
Isabel, Countess of Atholl, and a long line of prel- 
ates and laymen, who were loyal to the church, is 
now in the hands of the church of England, and 
because of that it has a tale to tell. 

Down in the lofty crypt there is a small chapel, 
where for over three hundred years a French Prot- 
estant service has been held every Sunday for the 
descendants of Walloon and Huguenot refugees of 
the Reformation period; an original grant of Queen 
Elizabeth. The Very Reverend Dr. Fremantle, 
Dean of Ripon, in a little book of which he is the 
author, says : " The continuance of a Presbyterian 
service in an Anglican cathedral for more than 
three centuries is a special and honorable feature of 



440 BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME 

Canterbur}'.^ Comment is almost unnecessar}', 
but I venture to ask, what do High Church Angli- 
cans think of such a practice ? And, further — in 
what Catholic church or cathedral in the world 
would a Bishop or Priest allow any part of his edi- 
fice to be used for a schismatical and heretical form 
of worship? 

Let us then be glad that we have leaped over the 
barrier that separates the Beautiful from the True; 
and because in so doing we see with a clearer vision, 
we look to the faith and devotion and prayer that 
erects our churches ; and we care very little whether 
that edifice is a glorious cathedral, a small wooden 
chapel, or a room in an attic ; for in each and all the 
One Saving Sacrifice is offered, from the rising 
of the Sim even to the going down of the same, by 
priests who are priests forever, according to the 
order of Melchisedech. 

1 Canterbury Cathedral published by Isbister and Co., Ltd, 
of London (1897), page 41. 



THE END 



/3A 



